
Book_ 



1 



/ 



A 




After Honlrakcn's engraving of the portrait by Sir Peter Lely. 



/ 

THE LIFE OF YOUNG 

SIR HENRY VANE 



GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY, AND 
LEADER OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT 



WITH A CONSIDERATION OF THE ENGLISH 

COMMONWEALTH AS A FORECAST 

OF AMERICA 



V 

JAMES K. HOSMER 

PROFESSOR IN WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, ST. LOUIS, MO. 
AUTHOR OF A " LIFE OF SAMUEL ADAMS," ETC. 



" As you advance in the second century of your national life, may we not ask 
that our two nations may become one people ? " — John Bright to the Com- 
mittee/or the Centennial Celebration o/llie A merican Constitution. 

"The name of young Sir Henry Vane is the most appropriate link to bind 
us to the land of our fathers." — Upham : Life of Vane. 






BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

2Efe RtoertfiDe #retf£, Cambribfle 

1888 






Copyright, 1S88, 
By JAMES K. HOSMER. 

All rights restJ-ved. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge : 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton and Company. 



• < 



To 

E. H. A. 

Non tam utilitas parta per amicum quam amici amor ipse 
delectat : tumque illud fit, quod ab amico est profectum, jucun- 
dum, si cum studio est profectum. Non utilitatem amicitia, sed 
utilitas amicitiam consecuta est. Solem e mundo tollere videntur 
qui amicitiam e vita tollunt ; qua a Diis immortalibus nihil melius 
habemus, nihil jucundius. 

Ciceko : De A micitia, 13, 14. 



" Vane, young in years but in sage counsel old, 
Than whom a better Senator ne'er held 
The helm of Rome, when gowns not arms repell'd 

The fierce Epirot and the African bold, — 

Whether to settle peace, or to unfold 

The drift of hollow states hard to be spell'd, — 
Then to advise how war may, best upheld, 

Move by her two main nerves, iron and gold, 

In all her equipage ! — besides to know 

Both spiritual pow'r and civil what each means, 

What severs each, thou hast learn'd, which few have done. 

The bounds of either sword to thee we owe : 
Therefore on thy firm hand Religion leans 
In peace, and reckons thee her eldest son." 

Milton, 1652. 



PREFACE. 



It fell to the present writer, a few years since, to 
prepare a life of Samuel Adams (American States- 
men series, Houghton, Mifflin and Company), who, 
according to his kinsman John Adams, was " the 
wedge that split apart " America from the land of 
our fathers. It falls to the writer now to prepare a 
life of young Sir Henry Vane, of whom it has been 
said that " his name is the most appropriate link to 
bind us to the land of our fathers." To treat each of 
these great historic figures has been for the writer a 
grateful task. There are few in America, perhaps at 
the present time there are few in England, who think 
it not well that England and America were severed. 
As to the usefulness of the work in which Samuel 
Adams was a main agent, doubt is not often enter- 
tained. But how as to the coming together again 
of the English-speaking race into some kind of a 
bond, moral if not political ? Are there many who 
think it either feasible or desirable ? 

The aspiration after such a coming together is 



Vlll PREFACE. 

probably by no means widespread, but it has been 
uttered, and by voices of power. John Bright wrote 
in 1887 to the Committee for the Celebration of the 
Centennial of the American Constitution : " As you 
advance in the second century of your national life, 
may we not ask that our two nations may become 
one people ? " Sir Henry Parkes, one of the fore- 
most statesmen of Australia, addressing the legisla- 
ture of New South Wales, November 25, 1887, said 
still more definitely : " I firmly believe it is within the 
range of human probability that the great groups of 
free communities connected with England, will, in 
separate federations, be united to the mother-country ; 
. . . and I also believe that in all reasonable proba- 
bility, by some less distinct bond, even the United 
States of America will be connected with this great 
English-speaking congeries of free governments. I 
believe the circumstances of the world will develop 
some such new complex nationality as this, in which 
each of the parts will be free and independent while 
united in one grand whole, which will civilize the 
globe." Mr. Goldwin Smith (Macmillan's Magazine, 
August, 1888), though believing a political union in 
the highest degree unlikely, says : " I prize and cher- 
ish as of inestimable value to us, all the moral union 
of the Anglo-Saxon race. I do not see why there 
should not, in the course of time, be an Anglo-Saxon 
franchise, including the United States." 



PREFA CE. IX 

The idea of such an English-speaking brotherhood 
has seldom found expression among Americans. To 
the present writer, for reasons which are briefly set 
forth in the concluding chapter of this book, it ap- 
pears a consummation devoutly to be wished. In his 
view the supreme interest which attaches to the figure 
of Vane, is not the fact that excepting Cromwell he 
was the foremost man of the English Commonwealth, 
a character whose career is full of dramatic situations, 
of manifestations of great ability, of heroism carried 
to the highest, but that he more than any figure that 
can be named, stands as a reconciler between kins- 
men who have been long estranged. He had a career 
both in America and England. Although living for 
the most part in England, and at so early a period, he 
was regarded in a curious way by his contemporaries, 
as a product of American influences. While labor- 
ing to restore the ancient English freedom, which he 
believed had been superseded by abuses that must be 
cast out, he became in his political ideas thoroughly 
American, living and dying in the premature effort 
to bring about in England government of the People, 
by the People, and for the People. The broad suf- 
frage which Vane favored is already practically se- 
cured, though he would have had a written constitu- 
tion, drawn up by the representatives of the People, 
according to the provisions of which the work of leg- 
islation and government should carefully proceed. 



X PRE FA CE. 

The abolition or transformation of the House of 
Lords is at hand ; few doubt that Disestablishment 
is near, and the abrogation of privileges that set some 
classes above their fellows. England has become, 
says John Richard Green, " a democratic republic 
ruled under monarchical forms." Her great depen- 
dencies, Australia, New Zealand, the Cape, and Can- 
ada, already possess a degree of popular freedom 
which surpasses our own. How desirable that an- 
cient prejudices should be mitigated by dwelling 
upon the identity between these lands and ourselves, 
and how can that be done better than by some study 
of one who at the same time was so thorough an 
American and so thorough an Englishman ! 

Young Sir Henry Vane has been the subject of 
three elaborate biographies. That of his contempo- 
rary and religious disciple Sikes (The Life and Death 
of Sir Henry Vane, Kt, by George Sikes, B. D., 
Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, London, 1662) 
illustrates curiously the fanaticism of that time, in 
which Vane himself largely partook, but contains sur- 
prisingly little of coherent and intelligible informa- 
tion. More than fifty years since Mr. Charles Went- 
worth Upham prepared a life of Vane (Sparks Amer- 
ican Biography, 1st series, vol. iv.), and a year or two 
later Mr. John Forster included a life of Vane in his 
" Statesmen of the Commonwealth." Both works 
possess great merits. Upham recognizes Vane's value 



PREFACE. XI 

" as a link binding America to the land of our 
fathers," while the book of Forster is marked with 
the qualities which have given him so high a place as 
a writer of biography. Both works, however, lack 
discrimination, speaking as they do of Vane in terms 
of unbroken eulogy, without mention of intellectual 
or moral limitations. While Vane was in some 
directions one of the clearest-headed of men, and 
possessed in practical life a marvellous power, he was 
in other directions so wild a dreamer that his influ- 
ence in his own time was impaired, and his vagaries 
at present are scarcely intelligible. While possessed 
of the noblest aims, which he followed out with an eye 
single to the public good, until he perished heroically 
upon the scaffold, the wiliest arts of the politician 
have seldom had clearer illustration than in his career. 
Says the latest biographer of Cromwell (Cromwell, 
by Frederic Harrison, Macmillan, 1888, pp. 117, 118) 
though he has the highest opinion of his hero : 
" Cromwell was accustomed both earlier and later to 
deal with astute men, and to meet them on equal 
terms in tortuous and secret paths. He was himself 
far from being an Israelite without guile. He had 
probably persuaded himself that in diplomacy, as in 
war, stratagems with an opponent are lawful parts of 
the game." Vane, too, had persuaded himself that 
stratagems with an opponent are lawful parts of the 
game ; nor as regards friends was he at all scrupu- 



Xll PREFACE. 

lous about using indirect and devious management to 
sway them to his ideas. Great was his skill both in 
outwitting the cunning brains against which it was 
his fortune to be pitted, and in creeping to his own 
ends through concealed and winding ways. 

Moreover as regards the mighty figure of Crom- 
well, which in any life of Vane must be scarcely less 
prominent than Vane himself, a tone of detraction is 
employed by both Upham and Forster, not congenial 
to an age which, through Carlyle, has been able to 
enter into Cromwell's heart. Mr. Upham prepared 
his work, having access only to such sources of in- 
formation as were open in America at a time when 
the best libraries were most imperfect. With re- 
spect to Forster's book, also, while his knowledge of 
the sources of information open in his day was ex- 
haustive, the changes at the Public Record Office 
in London, and the British Museum, during the last 
half century, have made much accessible which in his 
time had not come to light. 

In view of these considerations a new life of Vane 
cannot be regarded as out of place. The plan of the 
present writer was, first, to familiarize himself with 
such knowledge bearing upon his subject as was to 
be obtained in America. In the Mercantile Library 
and Public Library of St. Louis were found such 
original sources as the great folios of Rushworth, 
Nalson, and Thurloe, Somers's " Tracts," Maseres' 



PREFACE. Xlll 

" Tracts, 1 ' the " Harleian Miscellany," the Camden 
Society publications, and other repositories of the 
documents of the period of the English Civil War. 
Here also were Whitlocke's " Memorials," Burton's 
" Diary," Sprigge's " Anglia Rediviva," May's " His- 
tory of the Long Parliament," *the " Athenae Oxoni- 
enses " of Antony a Wood, the " Memoirs " of Sir 
Philip Warwick and of Colonel Hutchinson, Win- 
throp's " Journal," and the Histories of Clarendon and 
Bishop Burnet. These books, through the kindness 
of the librarians, Mr. John N. Dyer and Mr. F. M. 
Crunden, the writer has been permitted to have at 
hand and to use as his own. He is also under obli- 
gation to his associates, Dr. W. G. Hammond, Dean 
of the Law School of Washington University, and to 
Professor M. S. Snow, its acting Chancellor, for kind 
advice and the free use of their valuable private col- 
lections, in which he found such works as the " Par- 
liamentary History," the " State Trials," volumes of 
popular ballads, and a variety of legal and constitu- 
tional works bearing upon the matter in hand. In 
Boston he received equal courtesy, which he grate- 
fully acknowledges. At the Public Library was found 
a copy of the "Journals of the Commons"; at the 
State House, " The Retired Man's Meditations," a 
scarce theological book of Vane ; at the Athenaeum 
and the rooms of the Massachusetts Historical So- 
ciety, Ludlow's " Memoirs," and many rare works 



XIV PREFACE. 

relating especially to Vane's New England career; 
while from the Harvard Library was obtained Vane's 
life by Sikes, bound up with which are many of his 
religious writings. 

As to authorities of a later date, the writer has 
sought to make himself familiar with all important 
books bearing upon his subject. The number of 
such works is quite too large for specification here, 
and the reader is referred to the foot-notes, which, 
it is hoped, give some evidence of an effort to be 
thorough. Carlyle's " Cromwell," though absurdly 
depreciatory of Vane, and often wrath-provoking on 
account of the stream of coarse and bitter contempt 
poured out so generally upon other writers who have 
touched upon his topics, is yet of inestimable value to 
any student of the period, as well for the letters and 
speeches of the hero, as for the light flashed upon 
events from the torch of a great genius. Two other 
great works of our own day may be mentioned as 
having especial worth, — the " History of England 
under the Stuarts," by Samuel Rawson Gardiner, 
and the " Life of Milton with a History of his Time," 
by Professor David Masson. For this period Mr. 
Gardiner is beyond all question the first living au- 
thority. His ten ample volumes relating to the years 
from 1603 to 1642 contain a vast mass of facts, treated 
with painstaking and judicious care. To the ten 
volumes an eleventh has been added, carrying the 



PREFACE. XV 

record to 1644, the year of Marston Moor. The pres- 
ent writer regards it as a calamity for him that the 
work has as yet gone no farther. No other writer 
upon that period has made researches so extensive, 
while it is impossible not to be impressed with the 
coolness and candor with which Mr. Gardiner, " mor- 
bidly impartial " as he has been called by a witty 
critic, moves in the midst of the strifes of parties and 
men. It will be noted that this work has been much 
relied upon in the earlier portion of the following 
narrative. Particularly in the chapter relating to 
Strafford's trial, the literature respecting which is im- 
mense in volume, and in the discussion of which for 
nearly two hundred and fifty years the most violent 
passions have been rife and the most various views 
expressed, the writer has been glad to avail himself 
of Gardiner's clear and calm resume. 

The work of Professor Masson, though less de- 
tailed than that of Gardiner, is based upon study 
hardly less exhaustive. It possesses, moreover, a 
certain picturesque quality which greatly relieves the 
perusal of the six large octavos. The writer is under 
an especial obligation to Masson in this way: while 
observing the interesting light which is thrown upon 
Milton's life from the manuscript records of the 
Council of State, of which he was the Secretary for 
Foreign Tongues, the writer was led to believe that 
something equally interesting could be discovered 



XVI PRE FA CE. 

about Vane, who at the same time was its most en- 
ergetic member. Resolved to make the search, and 
to see what could be found in the British Museum 
and elsewhere, the writer went to England. He ac- 
knowledges gratefully the courtesy of Dr. Richard 
Garnett and the librarians generally of the British 
Museum, and of Mr. Walford D. Selby and his 
assistants in the Search-Room of the Public Record 
Office in Fetter Lane. By great good -fortune he 
met in the Search-Room Mr. S. R. Gardiner, an in- 
terview fruitful in valuable results. Learning the 
writer's errand, Mr. Gardiner offered his help, and 
the subsequent investigation was largely under his 
guidance. The writer studied the manuscript diaries 
of D'Ewes, Yonge, and Whitacre, members of the 
Long Parliament, sources of information of great 
value. He examined the Calendars of State Papers, 
the unprinted records of the executive committees of 
the Long Parliament, and many other manuscripts. 
His attention was also directed to the vast collection 
known as the " Thomasson Tracts," made by a London 
bookseller of the seventeenth century, and containing 
the fugitive literature of the period. Every sermon, 
ballad, play, news-sheet, broadside, pamphlet, Roy- 
alist or Roundhead squib, almost every handbill and 
placard, seems to have been bought by this indefati- 
gable gatherer, and laid aside. The huge mass, 
bound up in series, amounts to some thousands of 



PREFA CE. XV11 

volumes, and reflects curiously the face of that distant 
time. The volumes are brought, a shelf-full at a time, 
to the student, who with index in hand winnows as 
he can after wheat for his own bin. 

From the statement that has been made it will 
appear that the writer has taken some pains in the 
collection of his materials. He believes, in fact, that 
there is little of importance relating to the subject 
which has not passed through his hands. What suc- 
cess he has had in digesting his results, and in hitting 
the truth among the reports of friends too partial, and 
enemies too violent, his readers must judge. His N 
point of view is that of an American, who believes 
with Abraham Lincoln that in any Anglo-Saxon 
community " the plain People " can and should be 
trusted to govern themselves. He trusts, however, 
that his readers will find him fair to the upholders 
of different views, and not blind to the shortcomings 
of the men toward whom his own sympathies go 
out. 

In acknowledging obligation to gentlemen in Eng- 
land, Professors James Bryce, E. A. Freeman, and J. 
R. Lowell, and Mr. Henry White of the American 
Legation, must not be forgotten, who furthered the 
writer's aims by help and counsel. An especial debt 
is due to the Duke of Cleveland, the descendant of 
Vane, who extended to the writer a great courtesy 
described in its proper place in the volume. 



XVI 11 PREFACE. 

Two portraits of Vane by contemporary painters 
are in existence, — one by William Dobson, pre- 
served in the National Portrait Gallery, now at Beth- 
nal Green ; the other probably by Sir Peter Lely, 
preserved at Raby Castle. In the print collection of 
the British Museum, also, are contained proofs of two 
fine engraved likenesses of Vane, — one by Fai- 
thorne, a London artist who must have known him 
well ; the other by Houbraken, after Lely's portrait. 
The Faithorne picture presents a younger, and in 
some ways perhaps a stronger face than the other. 
The Houbraken, however, gives a countenance of 
which the power is by no means lost in its high-bred 
delicacy and grace. By permission of the Museum 
authorities the writer secured photographs of both 
engravings. The Houbraken is a good specimen of 
the skill of that great artist, and has been reproduced 
for the present volume. 

It must be mentioned in conclusion that this life 
of young Sir Henry Vane has been written at the 
instance of Mrs. Mary Hemenway of Boston, and is 
to be regarded as an outgrowth of the work under- 
taken by her to promote love of freedom and good 
citizenship known as the " Old South work." 

JAMES K. HOSMER. 
St. Louis, September 17, 1888. 



CONTENTS. 



PART I. VANE IN MASSACHUSETTS. 
1612-1637. 

CHAPTER I. 

Born in the Purple 1-15 

Antiquity and prominence of the Vane family, Howel ap 
Vane, Sir Henry Vane of Poictiers, I ; Sir Henry Vane of 
Wyatt's rebellion, Harry Vane, Duke of Cleveland in 1832, 2 ; 
Old Sir Harry Vane of the seventeenth century, becomes emi- 
nent under James I and Charles 1, favored by the Queen, 3 ; 
ambassador to Gustavus Adolphus, buys Raby Castle, principal 
Secretary of State, birth of young Sir Henry Vane, at school at 
Westminster, 4 ; at Oxford, in the English embassy at Vienna, 
5 ; extracts from his letters to his father, 6, 7 ; probably at 
Geneva, his appearance as a youth, 8 ; becomes a Puritan, his 
father's chagrin, 9 ; hides from the King behind the arras, Laud 
tries to convert him, 10 ; Vane resolves to go to New England, 
11; first heard of by Strafford, 12; his letter to his father be- 
fore sailing, 12, 13; his appearance as given in his portraits, 14. 

CHAPTER II. 

Massachusetts Bay in 1635 16-31 

The settlers cling to the sea, 16; pleasant suggestiveness in 
names of ships, gradual improvement in condition of the colo- 
nists, 17 ; polity of the colony, 18 ; description of early Boston, 
19 ; the colonists, 19, 20 ; the New England ministers, 21 ; their 
theology, controversies, relaxations, 22; John Wilson, Nathaniel 
Ward, 23, 24; Roger Williams, 25-2S ; John Cotton, 29-31. 

CHAPTER III. 

The Boy Governor 32-60 

Vane's arrival in Boston, his presumption, 32; chosen Gov- 
ernor, member of committee to establish " Fundamentals," 33, 



XX CONTENTS. 

34 ; assumes much slate, 34 ; troubles with the shipping, 35-38 ; 
settlement of Concord, 38 ; of Connecticut, 39, 40 ; John Gal- 
lop's sea-fight, 41, 42 ; beginning of the Pequot war, 43 ; the 
old soldiers, Standish, Patrick, Gardiner, Underhill, Mason, 43, 
44 ; the Pequots try to gain the Narragansetts, 44 ; foiled by 
Ro^er Williams, 45 ; Vane's progress through the colony, visit 
of Miantonimo to Boston, 46; Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, 47,48; 
outbreak of Hutchinsonian Controversy, 48 ; the colonists take 
sides, 49; the diatribe of Rev. Thomas Weld, 50; Winthrop's 
account of the dispute, 51 ; establishment of Harvard College, 
Vane desires to go home, 52 ; rebuked by Hugh Peters, 53, 54 ; 
confusion of mind of the disputants in the Hutchinsonian con- 
troversy, 54, 55; danger of the colony, 55, 56; trifling nature 
of the dispute, 57 ; Vane's unpopularity and fall, 58 ; danger of 
civil war, 59; Vane's resentment, 60. 

CHAPTER IV. 

The Controversy with Winthrop 61-82 

Order of the General Court for keeping out all persons dan- 
gerous to the Commonwealth, Cotton outraged by it, Winthrop 
defends it, 61 ; Winthrop defines a commonweal or body politic, 
Vane's strictures, his deference to royalty, 62 ; Winthrop main- 
tains the equity of the order, Vane answers, 63 ; maintains toler- 
ation, 64-66 ; Vane and Roger Williams recognize one another 
as kindred spirits, 66, 67; progress of the Pequot war, 67, 68; 
Mason's campaign against Sassacus, 69, 70 ; Vane departs for 
England, 70 ; progress of the Hutchinsonian Controversy, 71 ; 
terrible nature of the crisis, 72 ; Underhill the Antinomian, 73, 
74; discord of authorities as regards this period, 74, 75; Wen- 
dell Phillips on Vane, 75, 76 ; S. R. Gardiner's view, boyishness 
of Vane, 77 ; his splendid promise, 78 ; his magnanimity, 79, 80; 
his return to England, 80; recapitulation of his career hitherto, 
80-82. 



PART II. THE EVOLUTION OF REPUB- 
LICANISM. 1637-1648. 

CHAPTER V. 

The Opening of the Long Parliament 83-107 

Vane an American- Englishman, constitutional resume, 83; 
ancient polity of the Teutons, Saxon conquest of England, 84 ; 



CONTENTS. Xxi 

Norman conquest, Feudalism, 85; origin of Parliament, destruc- 
tion of freedom elsewhere than in England, 86 ; its vicissitudes in 
England, Simon de Montfort, Edward I, Richard II, House of 
Lancaster, Tudors, Stuarts, 87 ; young Sir Harry Vane's return 
to England, and marriage, 88; English Commonwealth as a real- 
ization of American ideas, 89 ; character of Charles I, 90,91 ; op- 
position to him of constitutional party, case of Sir John Eliot, 
Petition of Right, 92 ; Laud, Strafford, Star-Chamber, and High 
Commission Courts, 93 ; Scottish Coyenant, rebellion, summon- 
ing of the Short Parliament, 94 ; Pym, Hampden, 94-96 ; Vane 
elected for Kingston-upon-Hull, 96; made joint Treasurer of the 
Navy, the ancient Palace of Westminster, 97, 98 ; Pym's speech 
at opening of the Short Parliament, 98, 99; sullenness of the 
members, 99; dissolution of the Short Parliament, Vane a man 
of mark, 100; knighted by the King, Strafford's affront to the 
Vanes, 102; alleged cowardice of Vane, 102, 103; power of 
Strafford, 104; the Long Parliament convened, the leading 
members and their seats, 105 ; appearance of the House of 
Commons, influence of Pym and Hampden, 106; general discon- 
tent, 107. 

CHAPTER VI. 

The Trial of Strafford 108-136 

Career and character of Strafford, 108-110; denounced by 
Pym and impeached, 11 1; his arrest, the general terror, 112; 
Strafford's peace of mind, 113 ; arrest of Laud, Sir Philip War- 
wick's account of Cromwell, 114, 115; rise of the Root and 
Branch party, 115; the Separatists, court intrigues, marriage*of 
the Princess Mary, 116; Westminster Hall, 117; Strafford 
brought to trial, 118; difficulty in making out a case of treason, 
violence of the royal party, 119; evidence of the Vanes, 120; 
Clarendon's description, 121-125; the motive of the Vanes 
considered, 126; consideration of the conduct of young Sir 
Harry, 127-130; Strafford's honesty, 130; the bill of attainder, 
131 ; Strafford's defence, 132 ; passage of the bill of attainder, 
and of the bill that Parliament shall not be dissolved without 
its own consent, 133; general panic, 134; execution of Strafford, 
135 ; estimate of his influence, 136. 

CHAPTER VII. 

The Beginning of the Civil War 137-160 

Abolition of tonnage and poundage, of Star-Chamber and High 
Commission Courts, King's journey to Scotland, 137 ; Irish re- 
bellion, Grand Remonstrance, division of nation into Cavaliers 



XX 11 CONTENTS. 

and Roundheads, 138; impeachment of the Bishops, attempt to 
seize the Five Members, levying of troops, 139; growing promi- 
nence of Vane, 140; bill for abolition of Episcopacy passed, 
Vane's subtle management, his diligence, 141 ; Laud impeached, 
142; Clarendon's characterization of Vane, 143, 144; old Sir 
Harry leaves the King, testimony of Carterett and d'Ewes to the 
eminence of Vane, 145 ; Vane and the King at Theobald's and 
Newmarket, 146-148 ; Treasurer of the Navy under Parliament, 
his self-sacrifice, 148; Cavaliers characterized, Roundheads, 
149, 150; outbreak of Civil War, 150; scenes of the first cam- 
paign, their present aspect, 151 ; Edgehill, 152; the armies 
ready for battle, 153 ; Sir E. Verney, Sir Jacob Astley, 154 ; por- 
trait of Prince Rupert, his career and character, 154, 155 ; bat- 
tle of Edgehill, 156; London in danger, Vane opposes accommo- 
dation without redress of grievances, spirited conduct of the 
Queen, 157; Edmund Waller's plot, the rise of Sir Thomas 
Fairfax, 158 ; Parliament side depressed, sluggishness of Essex, 
Sir Wm. Waller and Fairfax defeated, fall of Bristol, death of 
Hampden, 159 ; Cromwell's plan to improve affairs, 159, 160. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

The Solemn League and Covenant 161-1! 

Vane scores Essex in Parliament, 161 ; Essex invites Vane to 
take the field, 162 ; idea entertained of sending Vane to the Army 
in Hampden's place, 163 ; reaction from America upon Eng- 
lish feeling, 163 ; progress of the Independents, 164 ; Indepen- 
dency in America, united there with intolerance, 165 ; English 
Independency derived from America, 166; John Cotton its 
father, 167 ; Owen, Goodwin, Cromwell, Vane, his disciples, 
168; the home of Cotton and Vane in Boston, 169; growth of 
Toleration, 169, 170 ; adopted by Baptists, by Churchmen, 
Roger Williams in England, 170 : his Bloudy Teneiit of Persecu- 
tion, 171 ; Vane's growth in Toleration, 172; Parliament resolves 
to appeal to the Scots, 172; commissioners appointed, 173; de- 
pressed condition of the cause of the Houses, London train- 
bands at Gloucester, 174; Vane reaches Edinburgh, 175; nego- 
tiations, 176 ; passage of the Solemn League and Covenant, 
177; Scotch commissioners appointed for London, 178; charge 
of duplicity against Vane, 17.1-181; the case examined, 182-184; 
Vane's dying declaration, 185, 186; the signing in St. Mar- 
garet's, 187, 188. 



CONTENTS. XXI il 



CHAPTER IX. 



The Committee of Both Kingdoms 189-21 1 

Withdrawal of Pym, characters of Selden, St. John, Henry 
Marten, 189; wit of Marten, 190; Whitlocke, Cromwell and 
Vane in the leadership, Gloucester saved, train-bands at New- 
bury, 191 ; death and funeral of Pym, 192 ; the King plots to 
compromise Vane, 192, 193 ; strained relations of the Houses, 
194; Violett's plot, 194, 195 ; discovered by Vane and St. John, 
195, 196; Vane's speech at Guildhall, 196, 197; rejoicings of 
city and Parliament, 198 ; origin of the Committee of Both King- 
doms in a Royalist intrigue, opposition of Peers and the peace 
party, 199; Committee of Safety of 1642,200; necessity of an 
executive head, 200; manoeuvring of Vane and St. John, 200, 
201 ; Committee of Two Kingdoms established, its great signifi- 
cance, its constitution, its records, 202 ; activity of Vane on 
the Committee, 203 ; King plots with Irish Papists, denies le- 
gal status of Parliament, successes of Parliament in the spring 
of 1644, 204; successes of King and Rupert in June, Vane sent 
to the siege of York, 205 ; plan for deposition of Charles I, 206 ; 
Vane's return and report from York, 207, 208 ; newspaper com- 
ments on his mission, 209, 210 ; his share in the victory of Mars- 
ton Moor, 210. 

CHAPTER X. 

Marston Moor 212-226 

Skill of Rupert, inefficiency of Leven before York, abandon- 
ment of the siege, 212 ; description of York, of Marston Moor, 
of Long Marston, present appearance of the battlefield, 213; 
description and position of the Parliament army, 214 ; the Cove- 
nanters, their harshness, their strength, David Leslie, 215 ; posi- 
tion of Cromwell on the left wing, the resume - of his early mili- 
tary career, 216; battle hymns, discord among the Cavaliers, 
217; order of the Cavalier host, Rupert and the Roundhead 
prisoner, Rupert's dog " Boy," 218; the White Syke ditch, be- 
ginning of the battle, 219; overthrow of Fairfax, danger at Par- 
liamentary Centre, bravery of Newcastle, flight of Leven, 220; 
demoralization of the Scots, charge of Cromwell and the left 
wing, stubborn fight of Rupert, 221 ; peril of the Roundheads, 
prowess of David Leslie, rout of the Cavaliers, 222; Fairfax cuts 
his way through, the Parliament Centre succored, destruction of 
the White Coats, 223 ; Cromwell named " Ironside " by Rupert, 
224; down Moor lane to the White Syke, the field full of skele- 
tons, 225 ; the battlefield at peace, 226. 



XXIV CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XI. 

Naseby 227-253 

Vane worn out, surrender of Essex to the King, successes of 
Montrose, 227; depression of the Scots, advance of Indepen- 
dency, 228 ; Baillie on Vane's position, 229; friendship for Vane 
of Roger Williams and Milton, adherents to Independency, 230 ; 
2d battle of Newbury, Cromwell denounces Manchester, origin 
of Self-Denying Ordinance, 231 ; Zouch Tate moves Self-Deny- 
ing Ordinance, manoeuvring of the Independents, Vane's speech, 
232-234; Commons pass Self-Denying Ordinance, opposed by 
Lords, Vane's activity, 234; futile negotiations at Uxbridge, the 
Independents push the New Model, influence of Argyle, 235 ; 
Cromwell denounces the Lords, Vane's speech at Guildhall in 
behalf of the New Model, 236, 237 ; final shape of the Self-De- 
nying Ordinance, astuteness of Vane at time of the New Model, 
238 ; Cromwell excepted from Self-Denying Ordinance, 239; 
constitution and officering of the New Model, its discipline, its 
piety, 240 ; subject of ridicule, victory of Montrose at Kilsyth, 
the King storms Leicester, his cheerfulness, 241 ; eve of the 
battle of Naseby, present appearance of the localities, 242, 243 ; 
advance of the King, 243 ; order of the Roundheads, 244; of the 
Cavaliers, 245 ; appearance of the two hosts, 246 ; Rupert over- 
throws Ireton, 247 ; Cromwell overthrows Sir Marmaduke Lang- 
dale, 248 ; the fight at the centre, 249 ; the King's bravery baf- 
fled, the Ironside pursuit, 250; the booty, the King's letters, 251 ; 
present appearance of the battlefield, 252 ; results of the battle, 

253- 

CHAPTER XII. 

The Rise of the Independents 254-282 

Ill-fortune of the King, his perfidy revealed, destruction of 
Montrose, 254; capture of Sir Jacob Astley, prosperity of the 
Independents, 255 ; strengthened by the Recruiters, the soldiers 
in Parliament, the Presbyterian leaders, William Prynne, 256; 
wildness of the sectaries, 257; John Lilburne, 257, 258; Roger 
Williams on the limits of Toleration, 258, 259; American ideas 
of the Ironsides, 260 ; Baillie's unhappiness, 261, 262; Indepen- 
dent manoeuvring, 262. 263; the King's two letters to Vane, 263, 
264; clashing between Presbyterians and Independents, the 
King goes to the Scots, 265; he is surrendered to Parliament, 
the three troopers at St. Stephen's, 266, 267 ; the Agitators, 267, 
268 ; Cornet Joyce seizes the King, 268 ; the Army demands 
the exclusion of eleven Presbyterian leaders, riots in London, 



CONTENTS. XXV 

269; the Ironsides march through the city, 270; the Heads of 
Proposals, 270, 271 ; spurned by the King, 272 ; meeting in the 
Army, 273; Cromwell and Ireton at the Blue Boar Inn, 273, 
274; the King flees to Wight, 275 ; his intrigues, league with 
the Scots, 276; the Argument of the People, and Case of the 
Whole Army, 2yj; their American ideas, 278-280; the leaders 
lag behind the rank and file, 281 ; the prayer-meeting, 282. 



PART III. AMERICAN ENGLAND. 
1648-1653. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

The Ironsides take Things in Hand 283-311 

Sir Thomas Wroth moves to lay by the King, 283 ; the cushion- 
throwing, 284; the Derby House Committee reconstituted, 285; 
threatening front of the King's friends, 285. 286 ; temper of the 
Independents, Ironside prayer-meeting at Windsor, 287; Adju- 
tant Allen's account, 287-292 ; military movements of Lambert, 
Fairfax, Ireton, siege of Colchester, 293 ; Cromwell's march to 
Wales, Hamilton passes Carlisle, 294: Cromwell marches against 
the Scots, 295; battle of Preston, 296; activity at Derby House, 
297 ; Vane broken down, 298 ; new negotiations with the King, 
299 ; Vane impressed by Charles, 300 ; Vane's astuteness, effi- 
ciency of Independent statesmen, 301 ; popular petitions against 
an agreement with the King, 302; the Grand Army Remon- 
strance, 302-305 ; Prynne's manly opposition, 305, 306 ; defec- 
tion of Fiennes, 306, 307 ; Vane opposes treaty with the King, 
307-309; the Independents overborne, 309; Pride's Purge, 310. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

The Rump against the World 312-340 

Vane disapproves Pride's Purge and the execution of the 
King, manifestos of the Army and the Rump, 312; withdrawal 
from public life of Vane and Algernon Sidney, 313; death of 
Charles, 314; parallel between Cromwell and Abraham Lincoln, 
315 ; expediency of the execution of the King discussed, speech 
of Scott, 315-317; Vane's reappearance in public life, Republi- 
canism supreme, 317 ; second Argument of the People, 319; Ire- 
ton's plan for a Constitution, 320, 321 ; odds against the Com- 
monwealth, 322; Lilburne gives trouble, 322, 323; hostility of 



XXVI CONTENTS. 

Ireland and Scotland, 323; Charles II proclaimed at Edinburgh, 
vigor of the Commonwealth's men, 324; Marten's wit, policy of 
the Honest Party, 325 ; inauguration of the Council of State, 
eminence of Vane, 326; he adopts Republicanism hesitatingly, 
327 ; constitution and membership of the Council of State, 
327-329 ; Milton becomes its Secretary for Foreign Tongues, 
329 ; execution of Hamilton and Lord Capel, 330 ; Lilburne im- 
prisoned, mutiny in the Army suppressed, steps taken to restore 
the Navy, 331 ; importance of Vane, committee to present heads 
for a new settlement, 332 ; Journal of tJie Commons, Order- 
Books of the Council of State, 333; their evidence as to Vane's 
activity, 334-336 ; Cromwell's Irish campaign, the Engagement 
of the Commonwealth, 337 ; relations established with foreign 
powers, Blake sent against Rupert, 338 ; activity of the Com- 
mittee for the new settlement, varied contents of the Order- 
Books of the Council of State, 339 ; Milton writes the Icono- 
clastes and Defensio Populi Ang/icam', 340. 

CHAPTER XV. 

Dunbar and Worcester 341-369 

Nomination of Council of State for second year, Vane perhaps 
ready for the new settlement, 341 ; disaffection of the sailors, 
Bradshaw and Vane state their difficulties, withdrawal of Fairfax, 
342 ; preparations for Dunbar campaign, activity of Navy com- 
mittee, 343 ; case of the " Hart " frigate, Popham's letter from 
before Lisbon, 344; Charles II arrives in Scotland, David Leslie 
leads the Scots, 345; his skilful manoeuvring, 346; Cromwell's 
letter to Haselrig, 347; battle of Dunbar, 348, 349; Crom- 
well's letter to his wife, 350; Scots retire northward, illness of 
Cromwell, attitude of Holland, 351; embassy to Holland, 352 ; 
sudden march of the King into England, 353 ; the Ironsides 
in pursuit, financial management of the Commonwealth, 354; 
Vane's prominence here as shown by the Order-Books, 355 ; 
also in military affairs, 356 ; in management of Navy, of affairs 
of Ireland and Scotland, Brother Fountain and Brother Heron, 
357; too high for Cromwell to fathom, 358; case of Rev. 
Christopher Love, 359; battle of Worcester, 360; Vane in- 
structs the Committee for congratulating the Lord General, 360, 
361 ; Scotland and Ireland subdued, treatment of the van- 
quished, incorporation of Scotland with England, 362 ; death 
of Ireton, his home, 363 ; Ludlow's panegyric, 364 ; earnest 
desire of Cromwell and Vane for the new settlement, 365 ; third 
Council of State, Scotland incorporated, 366; standing com- 



CONTENTS. XXV] 1 

mittees of Council of State, 366; the Rump overshadowed by 
Cromwell, 367 ; obsequiousness of foreign powers, 368 ; Pride on 
the lawyers, ecclesiastical settlement, 368 ; protest of Roger 
Williams, tolerance of Vane, 369. 

CHAPTER XVI. 

Blake and Van Tromp 370-398 

Holland outraged by the Act of Navigation, 370; an embassy 
sent to London, collision of the fleets off Dover, 371 ; evidence 
from the Order-Books of Vane's energy, 371 ; president of the 
Council of State, preparations for war, 372; instructions to 
Blake, energy of the Navy committee, Blake wounded, 373; Vane 
at the front, 374; testimony to his prominence of Sikes, 375, 
376; Milton's sonnet to Vane, 376-378 ; hostility to the Com- 
monwealth of foreign powers, reason for the enmity of Holland, 
379; might of the Dutch, 380; character of 17th-century sail- 
ors, 380, 381 ; description of the Narrow Seas, 382, 383 ; associa- 
tions connected with them, 3S4 ; Blake's career and character, 
385, 386 ; his fleet, approach of the Dutch, 387 ; Van Tromp, 
388 ; action of Feb. 18, 389, 390; action of Feb. 20, 391 ; action 
of Feb. 21, the Flying Dutchman, 392; further progress of the 
war, 393 ; death of Van Tromp, 394 ; Blake's further career, 
394, 395; war with Spain, the treasure-ships, 395, 396; battle 
of Santa Cruz, 396; death of Blake, 397. 

CHAPTER XVII. 

The Dissolution of the Rump 399-418 

Dissatisfaction with the Rump, small attendance of members, 
399 ; the rise of Blake, welcome to Parliament men, their fear of 
the influence of the Army and Cromwell, 400 ; difficulties in the 
way of a new settlement, Cromwell's plan, 401 ; plan of the 
Rump leaders, their eagerness for a dissolution, 402; particulars 
of Vane's Act of Dissolution, 403-405; meeting of the Rump 
and Army chiefs at Whitehall, 405 ; the bill before the House, 
406 ; the scene in St. Stephen's, 407 ; Ludlow's account, Crom- 
well's arrival, 408 ; " The Lord deliver me from Sir Henry 
Vane," 409 ; the Rump expelled, 410 ; Algernon Sidney's 
account, 411; Cromwell and Vane not as yet alienated, 412; 
Cromwell's motive, 413; his failure afterward, 414; hopeless- 
ness of the Republican position, 415 ; tributes to the greatness 
of the Rump, 416; Scott's defence of their policy, 417; the three 
heroes of the period, 418. 



XXVI 11 CONTENTS. 



PART IV. TO TOWER-HILL. 1653-1662. 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

The Healing Question 419-447 

Description of Raby Castle, 419, 420 ; Vane's retirement, 421 ; 
his wife, children, brothers, 422 ; later career, death, and char- 
acter of old Sir Henry Vane, 423 ; Vane's letter to Providence 
for Roger Williams, 424, 425 ; the reply of Providence, 425, 426; 
Vane glad to lay down public life, 426; proofs, of continued 
friendship between him and Cromwell, his return to public life 
sought for, 427; Henry Cromwell's dislike of Vane, 428; his 
religious vagaries, Retired Man's Meditations, 429, 430; his be- 
lief in second coming of Christ and Fifth Monarchy ideas illus- 
trated, 430, 431 ; popular belief in his fanaticism illustrated, 
43 2 > 433 5 h' s connection with the idea of a Written Constitu- 
tion, 433; the Written Constitution the unique feature in Amer- 
ican polity, 434 ; absence of such a controlling instrument in 
English polity, 435 ; value of the Written Constitution in Amer- 
ica, Hammond's view, 436; Sir H. Maine's view, 437; histor- 
ical development of Constitutional idea, its relation to Magna 
Charta, to mediaeval guild charters, the People ordain it, 438 ; 
American precedents, Social Compact on '' Mayflower," Rhode 
Island agreement, Connecticut Constitution of 1639, 439; Ire- 
ton's Agreei7tent of the People, Cromwell's Instrument of Gov- 
ernment, 440; occasion of the Healing Question, 441 ; recom- 
mends a Constitution, 442; to be formulated by a convention of 
representatives of the People, 443 ; style of the Healing Question, 
444 ; Cromwell as Protector, 445 ; Vane's appearance then, their 
portraits by Houbraken, 446; the headsman's axe, 447. 

CHAPTER XIX. 

Richard's Parliament 448-479 

Vane disciplined by Cromwell, 448, 449; sent to Carisbrook 
Castle, 449; his letters thence to Cromwell, 450, 451 ; descrip- 
tion of Carisbrook Castle, 452 ; political and religious writings, 
453; Cromwell's later career, 454; Milton's panegyric, 455; 
Cromwell's last days and death, 456, 457 ; the factions, Crom- 
wellians, Wallingford House Party, 457, 458 ; convening and 
constitution of Richard's Parliament, 45S ; Vane returned for 
Whitchurch, position and character of Lambert, 459; Claren- 
don's account of Vane and Haselrig at this time, 460; Vane's 



CONTENTS. XXIX 

speeches, on Richard as Protector, 461 ; describes his growth in 
Republicanism, 462; denounces the Petition and Advice, 463 ; 
on limiting Protector's power, against an Upper House, 464; as 
champion of the People, 465 ; denunciation of Richard, 466, 467 ; 
character and influence of Haselrig, 467, 468 ; character of Scott, 
468 ; fall of Richard, 469 ; restoration of the Rump, scene be- 
tween Vane and Prynne, 470 ; abdication of Richard, 471 ; false 
position of the Rump, 472 ; Cromwellians retire from the field, 
473; Lambert turns out the Rump, 474; Vane sides with the 
Army, 474 ; the Committee of Safety, last effort at a Constitution, 
475 ; desertion of Lawson, Fleetwood's weakness, 476 ; Vane 
judged by the Rump, Monk's march to London, 477; restoration 
of Long Parliament, Scott's intrepidity, 478 ; the Convention 
Parliament and Restoration, 479. 

CHAPTER XX. 

How Vane has been Judged 480-506 

Imprisonment of Vane, fate of other Republicans, 480 ; the 
People's Case Stated, variety of judgments as to Vane, 481 ; 
testimony of Maidstone, of Baxter, 482, 483 ; of Stuartist writers, 
Anthony a Wood, Biographia Britannica, 484; of Bishop Bur- 
net, 484, 485 ; of Clarendon, 485, 486 ; Don Juan Lamberto, 486 ; 
Vane in popular ballads, Vanity of Vanities, 487 ; A Psalm of 
Mercy, 488 ; epitaph on Vane, 489; Henry Stubbe, 490 ; his de- 
fence of Vane, Hume's view, 491; Clarendon's, 491,492; that 
of Sir James Mackintosh, 492; of Carlyle, 492, 493; summary 
of evidence as to Vane's power as a statesman, 494, 495 ; his 
relative rank among leading Commonwealthsmen, 496; com- 
parison between Vane and Cromwell, 496-498; his limitations, 
his fanaticism, 498-500; palliations for his weakness, 500, 501; 
Vane and the free-thinkers, 501, 502; wise and beautiful spirit 
of the Meditations concerning Maris Life, 502, 503; of the 
People's Case Stated, 504-506. 

CHAPTER XXI. 

The Trial before the Court of the King's Bench . 507-530 
Vane's letter to his wife from the Scilly Islands, 507, 508 ; re- 
moval to the Tower of London and arraignment, 508 ; his undi- 
minished power, his impression of the significance of his trial, 
509; the indictment, 510 ; the counts of the indictment, 51 1, 512 ; 
Vane's defence, the controversy with Charles I, 513 ; Salus pop- 
uli suprcma lex, 514; the claim that Vane was not a Republican, 
515, 516; vagueness of the term, 517; his belief in the sov- 



XXX CONTENTS. 

ereignty of the People, his tone as regards the Stuarts, 518-520; 
Vane defended, 521-523; he declares the subordinacy of the 
King, 523; Charles II refuses to grant pardon, 524; Vane's 
answer to the charge of keeping out the King, 526; the sentence, 
527; extract from the Reasons for an Arrest of Judgment, 
528, 529; Vane and Strafford compared, 530. 

CHAPTER XXII. 

The Scaffold 531-546 

Vane's address to his children the day before his execution, 
531; his prayer on the morning of his last day, 532, 533; descrip- 
tion of Tower-Hill, 533, 534; account by an eye-witness of the 
closing scenes, 534; in the Tower, 535; the progress to the scaf- 
fold, 536, 537; his dress and mien, 537; his last speech, 538; in- 
terrupted by the trumpets, 539; speech continued, 540; second 
interruption, 541 ; the speech broken off, 542; his last prayer, 543, 
544; the execution, 545; outpouring of a disciple, 545, 546; the 
triumph of Vane's ideas, 546. 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

Why the Story of Vane is Timely at the Present 

Hour 547-568 

Was the American Revolution worth while ? 547 ; American 
representation in the British Parliament favored by James Otis, 
548; Franklin's ideas, 549; Grenville's, Adam Smith's, 550; 
political unification desirable, 551; advantage to the individual 
of being the citizen of a great country, 551, 552; the present 
English-speaking dependencies of Great Britain, Canada, Cape 
Colony, 553; New Zealand, Australia, 554, 555; England as the 
parent of democratic republics, 555 ; the American Revolution 
not a mistake, 556; a benefit to the other English dependencies, 
to England herself, 557, 558; decay of English freedom in reign 
of George III, 558-560; the permanence of America dependent 
upon faithfulness to English traditions, 560, 561; substantial 
identity of English-speaking peoples, 561-563; interdependence 
desirable, 564 ; obstructing prejudices, 565 ; trial to mitigate 
them, 566; Vane as a connecting link, 566-568. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



PAGE 

Sir Henry Vane. After Houbraken's engraving of the portrait 

by Sir Peter Lely Frontispiece-. 

Facsimile of Letter to John Winthrop . . . .81 

Plan of Battle of Marston Moor 219 

Plan of Battle of Nasebv 246 

The Great Seal of the Commonwealth .... 368 



YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. 



PART I. 

VANE IN MASSACHUSETTS. 
1612-1637. 



CHAPTER I. 

BORN IN THE PURPLE. 

It would be hard to name an English family which 
during many centuries has possessed a prominence 
so honorable as that of the Vanes. 1 The stock ap- 
pears to have been in its origin Welsh, a certain 
Howel ap Vane of Monmouthshire, before the Con- 
quest, being the most remote ancestor to whom the 
heralds ascend. The family became fixed, however, 
in the county of Kent, and afterward in Durham, 
in England. As one traces the genealogy the name 
Henry, or Harry, often occurs, and several times 
in noteworthy connections. At Poictiers, in 1356, 
where the Black Prince with 12,000 followers routed 
60,000 French, taking prisoner John, their King, a 
Harry Vane was among the conspicuous heroes of 
the field. He had a part in capturing the French 
King, obtaining from the monarch his right-hand 

1 Collins's Peerage, vol. iv., ar- tannica, article " Vane ; " Stately 
tide "Vane;" Burke's Peerage, Homes of England, article " Raby 
article " Vane ; " Biographia Bri- Castle." 



2 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1554. 

gauntlet in token of submission. He received on 
the spot, from the Black Prince, the accolade, and " a 
dexter-gauntlet" remains to this day as a " crest " and 
a " charge " on the Vane arms. 

In the seventh generation from the young soldier 
of Poictiers, a young Sir Henry Vane took part in 
the insurrection of Sir Thomas Wyatt, who raised 
Kent against Bloody Mary, at the time when Protes- 
tant England felt outraged by her match with Philip 
II. of Spain. The leader was captured at Temple 
Bar, and died on the scaffold, but mercy was shown 
to Vane on account of his youth. He sat afterwards 
in two Parliaments, in the time of Elizabeth, and was 
the great-grandsire of the more famous rebel of the 
seventeenth century, whose long battle against arbi- 
trary power is about to engage our attention. In 
modern times the name has continued illustrious. 
In 1 832, still another Harry Vane, Duke of Cleveland 
and Earl of Darlington, although the most important 
considerations weighed upon him in favor of contin- 
uing old abuses, incurred, with the characteristic 
courage of his line, the curses of the class to which 
he belonged, and the diminution of his own power 
and resources, by standing faithfully at the side of 
Lord John Russell, for the reforms which were to 
save English freedom. 1 

As England's crisis in the seventeenth century was 
particularly sharp, so then it was that the fine quality 
of this admirable strain was especially shown. In the 
history of the period, two Sir Harry Vanes are prom- 
inent among the men of mark. The elder, born in 

1 Forster, Life of Vane, in the wealth," Harper's edition, p. 265, 
" Statesmen of the Common- note. 



1612.] BORN IN THE PURPLE. 3 

Elizabeth's day, was knighted by James, I. at the age 
of twenty-two, and came quickly into notice. He 
married Frances Darcy, of an old Essex family, and 
in 161 2, at Hadlow in Kent, was born to the pair 
the son whose career we are to study. The father, a 
man rather busy and bustling than energetic, became 
noted, while his son was coming forward through 
boyhood and youth, as a traveller, and as one accom- 
plished in the modern tongues ; he early reached dis- 
tinctions of another kind. He sat in Parliament in 
16 14, at the age of twenty-five, and soon became 
cofferer, or treasurer, of Prince Charles, then a hand- 
some boy, looking forward, we may be sure, to a future 
in which the Ironsides and the grewsome headsman 
by no means appeared. The elder Vane sat also in 
the Parliaments of 1620 and 1625, and in every suc- 
ceeding Parliament until his death during Cromwell's 
Protectorate. Besides young Sir Harry, three sons 
and five daughters were born to him. When James, 
with his maundering and fitful arbitrariness, came to 
his end at last, the accession, in 1625, of the digni- 
fied young prince, with brow high and narrow, with 
grave, melancholy eyes and habits so decorous, was the 
opportunity of the elder Vane. " Steenie," the Duke 
of Buckingham, whom Charles had been taught by 
his father to prize so unworthily, sank at Portsmouth 
beneath the stroke of Felton's dagger. Vane stood 
at once in high favor at court. Henrietta Maria, 
daughter of the great Henri IV., who came from 
France to be queen of Charles I., a woman lively, 
impressionable, full of brightness, looked approvingly 
upon the cofferer. He was soon a member of the 
Privy Council; in 1631 ambassador to Christian IV. 



4 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1626. 

of Denmark ; then to the great Gustavus Adolphus, 
in those days at the height of his fame, the highest 
diplomatic position at that time existing, in which 
Vane conducted affairs with skill. He followed the 
Swedes in the memorable campaign of 1632, return- 
ing to England in the month of November, when 
the Swedish hero laid down his life at the Great 
Stone at Lutzen. In the spring of the following 
year, Charles, on his way to be crowned in Scotland, 
received magnificent entertainment at Raby Castle, 
in Durham, the ancient seat of the Nevilles, which 
Vane had bought in 1626. From cofferer, the cour- 
tier became comptroller of the King's household, 
and at length principal Secretary of State. As the 
troubles drew on which were to make the decade 
from 1640 to 1650 a time of blood, we find him at 
one time in the field, at the head of a regiment of a 
thousand men. His service for the most part, how- 
ever, was in a civil capacity, and no man of that day 
felt more fully the royal favor. There was a shadow 
on his life from the enmity of a certain powerful 
figure, who stood by his side as a servant of the 
King. But this hated foe came, through him, as we 
shall see, suddenly to the block. As the elder Vane 
stood in middle life, all had gone well for him ; he 
had found the brightest worldly success. 

Seldom has baby had in its mouth spoon more 
golden, therefore, than the little Harry, who was 
brought at length from the green depths of Kent to 
London, and put to school, with some hundreds more 
of privileged boys, at Westminster, under the shadow 
of the great abbey. The nickname " Harry " the 
Henrys of the old days never outgrew, even though 



1 63 1.] BORN JN THE PURPLE. 5 

they became afterwards kings and knights. As a 
boy our Harry was bounding and spirited, probably 
committing no greater follies or offences than the 
venial ones of hearty, healthy youth. His Puritan 
conscience in later days, as was the case with Bun- 
yan, was ill at ease over his boyish escapades, and 
even on the scaffold he accused his earlier self with 
a bitterness quite undeserved. Lambert Osbalde- 
stone was his master, and boys destined to attain 
great fame were his companions — Thomas Scott and 
Arthur Haselrig, republicans afterward scarcely less 
noted than Vane himself, long his friends and help- 
ers, until at last the complications of evil times car- 
ried them apart from one another. 

When the Westminster life had passed, young 
Harry became a " gentleman commoner " at Magda- 
len College, Oxford. He was now a youth of sixteen, 
and the university was prepared to treat obsequiously 
the son of so thriving a courtier. But already a 
restiveness under restrictions began to appear in 
him, the germ of the sturdy rebel spirit which was 
to become so marked in the future. At his matricu- 
lation he found the time-honored scholastic costume 
repugnant to him. " He quitted his gown, and put 
on a cloak ; " 1 and though he studied for a time, he 
was at length removed, and sent by his father to 
Vienna, in 1631, in the train of the English ambas- 
sador. It was not a good place for a boy of nineteen. 
At the court of Ferdinand II., who was struggling 
against Gustavus Adolphus, he lived in an atmos- 
phere of intrigue. He maintained a correspondence, 
partly in French, partly in cipher, with his father, 

1 Anthony a Wood, A thence Oxonienses, article "Vane." 



6 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1631. 

then at the Swedish headquarters, and became privy 
to important state secrets. 1 He knew well the wily 
Jesuits who swayed the Austrian state counsels, and 
one can hardly resist the conclusion that a certain 
cunning for which, with all his nobleness, he after- 
wards became famous, must have found here an 
important stimulus. A series of Harry's letters of 
this time still exists in the Public Record Office in 
London. 

August 10, 163 1, he apologizes for feeling so little 
interest in the Thirty Years' War. " Je suis si peu 
penchant au faict de la guerre. . . . Je ne puis pas 
disposer mon naturel et affections a une affaire que 
vous semblez tant approuver." He is very respectful, 
very sorry to disappoint his father " apres tant de 
soin et d'espence que vous eues employez sur moy." 
Passing over a number of letters on state topics, in 
which Father Quiroga, the evil genius in those days 
of the court at Vienna, is often referred to, letters 
which the faded ink and frequent diplomatic cipher 
make unintelligible except to such indefatigable stu- 
dents as Mr. S. R. Gardiner, the writer finds one writ- 
ten from Nuremberg, November 27, 1631, 2 when 
Harry was on his way home, which has some inter- 
esting passages relating to that town just before it 
became the scene of the memorable struggle between 
Wallenstein and Gustavus. 

In the old French of the age of Richelieu, he 
says he has not ceased to take medicine " pour esta- 
blir et parfaire la guerison de ma maladie," from 

1 S. R. Gardiner, History of 2 Received by Vane, Sr., at Mo 
England, viii. 173. ritzburg. State Papers, Germany, 

1631. 



1 631.] BORN IN THE PURPLE. 7 

which he had suffered " trois sept maines." He has 
had a coat made for his journey, as his father directed, 
and also has brought another with him : " Mais le 
malheur vouloit que nostre coche se renversoit au 
milieu d'un eau, que non seulement l'habit, mais 
toutes mes livres, papiers, et autres petites besognes 
sont si gastes et estrangement accommodes, qua peine 
me reste-il de l'esperance " of using the things again. 
In this time of confusion hosts charge high, on his 
journey. He has only 350 left of the 1,600 dollars 
he started with. He will get what he needs of M. 
Pestalouche, according to directions. His stay in 
Nuremberg, where he receives great attention, will 
cost something. He is called on at once by Kem- 
nitius, commissary of the King of Sweden, who 
stays to supper. Dr. Fetzer, former ambassador at 
Vienna for Nuremberg, and also M. Calendrini, wait 
upon him, who extend all sorts of courtesies. Lords 
of the town send him " douze grands pots de diverses 
vins," and offer to show him the city. " Yesterday, 
after dinner, Comte de Solmes sent his ' Reistmaistre,' 
a baron, to visit me." Vane returns the call. The 
count hopes to have the honor of seeing old Sir 
Harry. " You can well judge all this will cost." 
Young Harry hopes, in the margin, his father will 
not mind the writing ; he is in a great hurry, and 
badly accommodated with pens, ink, and paper. This 
is, however, his most legible letter, and one wishes 
he had always had Nuremberg stationery. 

It has been believed that Vane spent a period at 
Geneva, and that he was much affected by the theo- 
logical atmosphere of Calvin's town. In coming 
years, he was to show in practical life a force and 



8 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1632. 

sagacity surpassed by few men of the English race. 
Side by side with this, however, existed an extraordi- 
nary dexterity in and liking for intellectual disputes, 
the subtle word-splitting for which the school-men 
had been famous, whose mantle had fallen upon the 
shoulders of the reformed divines. As yet the abil- 
ity for affairs lay undeveloped in our hero. He in- 
haled perhaps for a time the air of the Swiss city, 
sulphurously pungent with the fumes of a grim the- 
ology. As a high-born young stranger, to whom all 
doors were open, he may have been present as spec- 
tator or combatant at battles where the weapons were 
dialectics, and may have sometimes taken part among 
the capped and gowned champions, the pupils and 
heirs of the men whose zeal and intellectual force 
had prevailed to fix upon Protestantism a philosophy 
so utterly repulsive. When at length he came home, 
at any rate, his character had taken on an austerity 
quite foreign to youth : he was a pronounced enemy 
to the Church of England, both as to its government 
through bishops and its formal service. 

When Harry at last returned to England, a friend 
of his father, Sir Tobie Matthew, wrote to the father 
a letter, a passage from which is given here from the 
autograph : " London, March 29, 1632. Your Lo? s 
familie is in perfect health except ye indisposition 
of your sonne. Believe me, my lord, I find him ex- 
treamly improved and very worthy of his father. His 
french is excelently good, his discourse discreet, and 
his fashion comely and faire, and I dare venture to 
foretell that he will grow a very fitt man for any such 
honour as his fathers merits shall bespeake, or the 
kings goodnesse imparte to him." * 

1 State Papers, Domestic, ccxix. 64. 



1 633-4-] BORN IN THE PURPLE. 9 

When father and son came face to face, however, 
stately and able as the young man was, the parent 
naturally was full of consternation at the shape into 
which the boy had developed. As to personal beauty 
and grace, indeed, he probably was all his father could 
ask. But he had absorbed the Puritanism which the 
court so hated. At court, Sir Henry, as one preferred 
by the Queen, was a principal figure. He was trusted 
with grave responsibilities, and besides was not averse 
to the masques and dances which the French princess 
enjoyed, and easily tolerant of the popish ceremonies 
and the priests, through her installed in the palace 
at Whitehall. The father was, in fact, an easy man 
of the world, who took the court of Charles I. as he 
found it, with no misgivings, just as he afterwards ac- 
commodated himself with little trouble to Parliament 
and Protectorate. " Bustling " everywhere, as Claren- 
don describes him, he fitted in at a later time among 
the halberds and armor of the Ironsides, as now 
among the pillows, hautboys, and silken fringes of 
Stuart housekeeping, — everywhere with a pliability 
which enabled him to keep in the foreground, how- 
ever circumstances might change. Such a father, of 
course, stood aghast before the sad-browed, uncom- 
promising Puritan son. He had hoped for promise 
of a different kind, and the question began at once 
to press whether a son of such dispositions, with such 
abilities to make them dangerous, — for he made upon 
all an impression of power, — might not seriously com- 
promise his own prospects. 

Sir Harry Vane did what he could to counteract 
the tendencies which were so manifest. Young 
Harry was introduced at court, where the way to 



IO YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1633-4. 

all favors was open before him, had not the severe 
stripling eyed coldly the pomp and glitter. Already, 
in his eyes, the divinity that doth hedge a king was 
utterly unapparent. There is a story that his father 
left him alone, purposely, in a room where he was 
certain to come into close contact with the King, 
hoping that the real personal dignity and grace of 
Charles might produce an effect. Young Harry, how- 
ever, hid himself behind the arras. The King, en- 
tering, and seeing the arras move, poked with his 
cane at the supposed intruder, till Harry was forced 
to present himself, and retire in confusion. 1 

As Charles possessed no glamour that could befool 
him, so the bishops could offer no argument that 
weighed at all in his eyes. Those were the days of 
the power of Laud, already Bishop of London, soon 
to become Archbishop of Canterbury, and to enter 
with Strafford upon the policy of " Thorough," which 
was to bring them both to the block. As yet there 
was no muttering of coming danger : the prelate 
swayed the court, and was quite ready, at the elder 
Vane's request, to take in hand the moody boy, dan- 
gerously infected from the continental cities that 
had gone into such extremes in the revolt from 
Rome. One can imagine the pair : Laud, small 
and choleric, punctiliously habited in the bands and 
cap which he made essentials of his calling, shallow 
but alert, perfectly sincere, walking the narrow An- 
glican ridge, on one side of which lay Rome, on 
the other Puritanism ; Harry Vane, serious, fluent 
through his training, speaking out without fear his 

1 Godwin, Hist, of Commonwealth, vol. iii. p. 2. 



1 635-] BORN IN THE PURPLE. 1 1 

heresies. The prelate was no match intellectually 
for the youth he had taken in hand. It is recorded 
that the debate, from a good-natured remonstrance 
on the Bishop's part, soon became heated. The baf- 
fled Laud lost his temper, the face of the little man 
flushing red, as was his wont. Harry Vane con- 
temptuously tossed his long curls, for so far, if a Pu- 
ritan, he was no Roundhead. The interview ended, 
and the father feared his son was incorrigible. 

Young Harry now took a resolution not at all 
stranq-e under the circumstances. Fixed as he was 
in his views, there was no career for him in England. 
How irksome life would be in the presence of his dis- 
appointed father, of the King whom he had avoided, 
the church dignitary he had defied! Of roaming on 
the continent he had had enough. Why not try New 
England ? It was almost leaving the planet, to be 
sure, to go there, but he was at the age when dis- 
tance and difficulty do not appall. Laud was driving 
scores of the Nonconformist ministers, among the 
best of English brains and hearts, beyond the seas. 
Hundreds of the sturdy yeomanry, the flocks, were 
following these exiled shepherds. Now and then men 
and women of gentle, even of noble, birth had braved 
the risks, and still others were upon the brink of de- 
parture. Harry Vane set his face westward. His 
father remonstrated, but it is said the King interfered 
to remove the obstacles. In 1635, when Harry was 
just twenty-three years old, a correspondent of his 
father's great rival, Sir Thomas Wentworth, then 
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, writes to Wentworth: 1 

1 Forster, Life of Vane, in " Statesmen of the Commonwealth," p. 
267 (Harper & Bros., 1846). 



12 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1635. 

" The Comptroller Sir Henry Vane's eldest son hath 
left his father, his mother, his country, and that for- 
tune which his father would have left him here, and 
is, for conscience' sake, gone into New England, 
there to lead the rest of his days. ... I hear that 
Sir Nathaniel Rich and Mr. Pym have done him 
much hurt in their persuasions." Wentworth, soon 
to be Earl of Strafford, probably heard now of the 
youth for the first time : he was to know him after- 
ward under circumstances very memorable. The 
thought, " So Pym demoralizes the young men," may 
perhaps have risen in his mind, as he dwelt for a 
moment on the great national leader, once his friend, 
but now his foe. 

Another scrap has come down, relating to Vane's 
emigration. A certain George Garrard, writing to 
Edward, Viscount Conway and Killultagh, says, 1 
Sept. 18, 1635 : " Sir Henry Vane also hath as good 
as lost his eldest son, who is gone into New Eng- 
land for conscience' sake: he likes not the discipline 
of the Church of England ; none of our ministers 
would give him the sacrament standing ; no persua- 
sions of our Bishops nor authority of his parents 
could prevail with him : let him go." 

But let us hear the young man speak for himself. 
Upon the eve of sailing he writes to his father : 2 
" My humble suite is that you wil be pleased to dis- 
patch my passe w*- his Ma!^, and if you shall so think 
fitt, to vouchsafe me by this bearer an assurance from 
yourself that you have really resolved this place for me 

1 Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceed, vol. xii. p. 246. 

2 Ibid. pp. 245, 246. 



1 635.] BORN IN THE PURPLE. I 3 

to goe to, that I may w th out farther protraction of time 
prepare myself effectually for it w 4 » things sutable for 
the place. And, Sr, beleeve this from one that hath 
the honour to bee your sonne (though as the case 
stands judged to be a most unworthy one), that how- 
somever you may bee jealous of circumventions and 
plots that I entertaine and practise, yet that I will 
never do anything (by God's good grace) which both 
w* honour and a good conscience I may not justify 
or bee content most willingly to suffer for. And 
were it not that I am very confident that as surely as 
there is truth in God, so surely shall my innocency 
and integrity bee cleared to you before you dye, I 
protest to you ingenuously that the jealousy you have 
of mee would breake my heart. But as I submitt all 
other things to the disposall of my good God, so do 
I also my honesty amongst the rest, and though I 
must confesse I am compassed about w th many infir- 
mitys, and am but too great a blemish to the religion 
I do professe, yett the bent and intention of my heart 
I am sure is sincere, and from hence flowes the 
sweete peace I enjoy w*- my God amidst these many 
and heavy trialls w ch now fall upon me and attend 
me : this is my only support in the losse of all other 
things, and this I doubt not of but that I have an 
all sufficient God able to protect me, direct me, and 
reward me, and w l »in his due time will doe it, and 
that in the eyes of all my freinds. 

" Your most truely humble and obedient Sonne, 

" H. Vane. 

"Cherring Cross, this 7? of July, 1635." 



14 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1635. 

As Vane appeared upon the ship, among the Puri- 
tans who were seeking the New World, he was at 
first regarded with suspicion. He was maturing into 
the presence which his portraits give him, — an oval 
countenance of fair complexion, running above the 
large, widely-opened, black-brown eyes into an ample 
brow, a straight, prominent nose, beneath which the 
lips, full and brightly red, as of a man of strong vital- 
ity, are very firm and somewhat stern. The lower 
face possesses strength, and the head, carried above 
the shoulders in an erect and manly poise, has a mass 
of rich brown flowing locks, like a Cavalier, instead 
of the close-clipped hair that one would look for in 
the man about to become an uncompromising Repub- 
lican. Clarendon, the Cavalier historian, a witness 
highly prejudiced, although his characterizations of 
foes as well as friends are often not only extremely 
graphic but fair, has described the appearance of 
Harry Vane as " unbeautiful," though making " men 
think there was somewhat in him of extraordinary," 
a want of attractiveness which the historian declares 
he came well by, since his parents were neither of 
them conspicuous for grace. The head and face, at 
any rate, are grave and powerful, a proper front for 
such a leader as he was destined to become. 1 His 
companions on shipboard thought at first he might 
be a spy, and found his long hair especially repug- 
nant. As the voyage continued, however, and the 

1 The frontispiece is after Hou- characteristics mentioned in the 

braken's engraving of the portrait text are more apparent in the en- 

of Vane by Sir Peter Lely. Faith- graving of Faithorne than in that 

orne's portrait represents Vane of Houbraken. 
at an earlier time. Some of the 



1 635.] BORN IN THE PURPLE. 1 5 

cabin and deck of the little tossing vessel were the 
scene of serious discourse and sombre devotion, his 
true quality soon became apparent, and before the 
point of Cape Cod was sighted he was master of all 
hearts. 



CHAPTER II. 

MASSACHUSETTS BAY IN 1 635. 

The colony of Massachusetts Bay. in 1635, was 
far from being well established. Settlers enough had 
crossed the sea to occupy a few points on the coast 
and just within the mouths of the rivers. Salem, to 
the north, was older than Boston by a year or two ; 
and still farther northward, at Agawam, John Win- 
throp and his followers were just reclaiming the farms 
which were to form Ipswich. About Boston as a 
centre were closely grouped Charlestown, Newtown, 
soon to become Cambridge, Watertown, Roxbury, 
and Dorchester. Through forty miles of woods, one 
could struggle to Plymouth, where the roots of the 
earlier colony were beginning to grasp the sand with 
some firmness, after a precarious hold of fifteen years. 
As yet there was no settlement beyond tide-water ; 
the scattered groups of Englishmen clung to the 
shore, for, bleak though it was, it was safer than the 
savage and panther-haunted swamps and thickets 
which shut them in to the landward. They held fast 
to the sea, because it was the path homeward also ; 
their best path, moreover, to one another, as they 
coasted now to the headland of Manomet, now to 
Cape Ann, or were borne by the tide to the neighbors 



1635] MASSACHUSETTS BAY IN 1635. I J 

about the harbor and up the Charles River. There 
is a pleasant suggestiveness in the names of the an- 
cient ships as they occur in the records, taking us 
back into the tenderness with which the hearts of 
the pioneers watched them as they came and went. 
The " Mayflower " leads the way ; the first ship the 
settlers build is the " Blessing-of-the-Bay ; " the 
" Hand-Maid " conveys cattle ; lookouts on the head- 
lands sight the approaching " White Angel ; " the 
" Welcome " brings a company of friends ; the 
" Hopewell," the " Friendship," and the " Charity " 
bring news and food. Scarcely larger they were than 
the harbor-craft of our time, but stanch and often 
swift. " Mr. Ball his ship," says Winthrop, " went 
from hence to England and saw land there in eigh- 
teen days." 

Though it could not yet be said that the colony 
was certain to live, things were in better condition 
than a few years before, 1 when the opportune arrival 
of the " Lyon " had rescued the plantation from a 
want that might soon have become famine. Once 
the Governor even could not safely venture upon a 
short walk from his door without arms to defend him- 
self from the wolves ; or if an Englishman lost him- 
self in the woods while hunting a stray heifer, it 
depended entirely upon the capricious good-nature 
of the sannup, or squaw, whom he might chance to 
meet, whether he returned alive to his friends. Both 
wild man and wild beast, however, had now become 
respectful ; plenty was beginning to prevail, and the 
" Lyon " arriving again after a round trip across the 

1 Winthrop' 's Journal, i. 41 ; (Palfrey, Hist, of N. E. i. 325, note.) 



1 8 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1635. 

Atlantic, the farmers could spread an abundant 
Thanksgiving dinner for the friends she brought, 
tired of their ocean fare. 1 

The charter, originally intended for a trading cor- 
poration, of which the members were to live in Eng- 
land, directing thence the labor of their servants in 
America, had been transferred across the Atlantic. 
The rules established for the private company had 
become transformed into the foundations of a broad 
polity. 2 A Governor, Deputy-Governor, and eigh- 
teen Assistants held the power, according to the ori- 
ginal charter. Seven Assistants, with the Governor 
or Deputy, meeting once a month, made a quorum. 
Annually, four Great or General Courts were held, to 
elect and commission officers, and to vote upon the 
admission of freemen. Only eleven or twelve of the 
original Assistants, who at length were called also 
Magistrates, ever came over. In 1631, church-mem- 
bership was made a condition of the franchise. In 
1632, the freemen had insisted on and secured the 
right to choose the Governor and Deputy. At the 
court for the general election in May, the whole body 
of freemen were present, but at the three other an- 
nual courts deputies attended. The Governor was 
no longer the head of a mere commercial enterprise, 
but began to seem like the chief of a nascent State ; 
the board of Assistants had grown into a senate ; the 
employees of a corporation had become the citizens 
of a Commonwealth. 

" The rocky nook, with hilltops three, 
Looked eastward from the farms, 

1 Winthrop, i. dy 2 Memorial Hist, of Boston, i. 156. 



i635-] MASSACHUSETTS BAY IN 1635. 1 9 

And twice each day the flowing sea 
Took Boston in its arms." x 

In 1635, the rocks and the Trimountain were still 
visible, as they are no longer, and the flowing sea, not 
as now shouldered out by square leagues of " made 
land," could embrace Boston so overwhelmingly that 
at spring tides there was little left above the sur- 
face but the three hills. Close by what is now State 
Street stood the primitive town-hall and church. 
The Governor, Winthrop; lived near the site of the 
Old South, the water for the family needs coming 
from the spring that still flows among the founda- 
tions of the Post-Office. The huts of the pioneers 
straggled from the lower ground up upon the steep 
slopes. On the highest summit rose the pole sur- 
mounted by the beacon. Looking from its foot down 
upon the peninsula of about seven hundred acres, 
the irregular village street could be seen to part into 
cart-tracks, and at length into cow-paths, while sea- 
ward, beyond the Castle watching the channel on the 
present site of Fort Independence, could be seen the 
harbor islands, the headland at Hull, and at length 
the open ocean. 

If we look at the colonists themselves, while of 
the laymen the larger portion were of humble estate 
and simple education, there were a number of gentle 
birth and ample means. The Lady Arbella John- 
son, who died in the early months, was daughter of 
the third Earl of Lincoln. Roger Harlakenden, the 
Magistrate, whose sister Mabel became the wife of 
John Haynes, Governor of Massachusetts, and after- 

1 Emerson, Boston Hymn. 



20 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1635. 

wards a principal founder of Connecticut, could trace 
his line back to the Plantagenets. The family of 
Saltonstall was illustrious. John Winthrop, the 
father of the colony, usually elected Governor at the 
May General Court, and even when not Governor 
the mainstay of the enterprise, through his abundant 
means, his public spirit, and his remarkable wisdom, 
was of most honorable station. He came from a Suf- 
folk family, staked in the enterprise a fortune yielding 
an annual income, for those days most handsome, of 
^"600 or £700, and, though not always in favor, al- 
ways fortunately possessed sufficient influence to turn 
things to a happy issue. It was not a democratic 
community. Blood was respectfully deferred to. 
Wrote Winthrop : x " The best part of a community 
is always the least, and of that best part the wiser 
part is always the lesser." In this expression Win- 
throp's associates in the management of affairs would 
undoubtedly have concurred. Of the dignitaries of 
the earlier time, Vane almost alone had any trace 
of modern American ideas, and in his mind, as will 
be seen, the free notions for which he afterwards con- 
tended so powerfully were less clearly defined in his 
Massachusetts days than was afterwards the case. 

" Let men of God in court and churches watch 
O'er such as do a toleration hatch," 

wrote Dudley, 2 a figure scarcely less conspicuous in 
the first days than Winthrop ; and intolerance was 
received in the colony as a matter of course, with the 
noteworthy exceptions presently to be considered. 

1 Journal, vol. ii. p. 428, ed. 2 Hutchinson, Hist, of Mass. 
1853. Bay, i. 75- 



1 635.] MASSACHUSETTS BAY IN 1635. 21 

Leaving out a few leading spirits among the lay- 
men, no class in the colony exercised anything like 
the influence possessed by the ministers. As regards 
birth and powerful connections, matters in those days 
so highly regarded, no men were superior to them. 
John Wilson, 1 teacher* of the Boston church, was 
grandnephew of Grindal, Archbishop of Canterbury, 
and had married the daughter of Sir John Mansfield, 
master of the Minories and the Queen's surveyor. 
The first wife of Peter Bulkeley, of Concord, was 
aunt of Sir Thomas Allen, Lord Mayor of London, 
and his second wife a daughter of Sir Richard Chit- 
wood. 2 The wife of Sherman, of Watertown, was the 
granddaughter of an earl. 3 At first the ministers 
had some loose connection with the Church of Eno:- 
land. They became, however, zealous Nonconform- 
ists, and as Laud attempted to impose tenets, vest- 
ments, and ceremonies savoring of the abhorred 
Popery which had been left behind in the preceding 
century, they fell away more and more into Indepen- 
dency, ceasing to remember with regret the univer- 
sity fellowships, the rectorships of fine parishes, the 
cathedral establishments, which they had resigned 
for life in the wilds. 

Those stout divines were shapes grisly and por- 
tentous. John Cotton, the chief among them, said, 
" I have read the Fathers and the Schoolmen, and 
John Calvin too, but I find that he that has Calvin 
has them all;" and the same great light "loved to 
sweeten his mouth with a piece of Calvin before he 

1 Mather, Magnalia, i. p. 276. 2 Ibid. p. 364. 

Hartford ed., 1820. » Ibid. p. 466. 



2 2 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1635. 

went to sleep." Like him, the brethren in general had 
taken into their souls, in spite of its bristling points 
and sulphurous reek, the toughest theology ever en- 
tertained in Christendom. They had managed to di- 
gest and assimilate it, reconciling it with the universe, 
and rinding illustration for it from learning of the 
widest reach then possible. What the ministers so rel- 
ished they administered to all as proper spiritual food. 
They could turn it, as occasion served, into milk for 
babes or meat for men ; and in prayer, sermon, lec- 
ture, and every sort of private exhortation, deliver it 
hour after hour, without failure of voice or weakness 
of knee. The sincerity of the ministers was perfect, 
their zeal glowing. What could stand against men 
thus in earnest, and made powerful by a training so 
tremendous ? In the theocracy they stood like tow- 
ers, the chosen men for learning, genius, and charac- 
ter, by whom all were swayed. They fought with 
one another in the fiercest controversies, in terms to 
us scarcely intelligible, over matters which the world 
now regards as trivial, or absurd, or perhaps repulsive, 
— a battle no more engaging modern sympathies 
than the war of the " dragons of the prime." 

Even in their moods of relaxation they appear to 
modern taste scarcely more attractive. After a cer- 
tain fashion they were all poets, and the quips and 
rhymes in which these tough bows of Geneva unbent 
themselves, for the moment leaving the prowling ad- 
versary un vexed by their missiles, are curious enough. 

We must look at a few of the ministerial figures 
who are to appear in juxtaposition more or less close 
with young Harry Vane, during his American life, 



I635-] MASSACHUSETTS BAY IN 1635. 23 

or soon after. John Wilson, first pastor of the 
church in Boston, as Cotton was the teacher (the 
New England pulpits from which such constant can- 
nonading was demanded were of necessity double- 
barrelled), was a bold and combative character, who 
combined with the fiercest polemic activity a great 
taste and faculty for the conceits and quirks which 
the ministers so generally loved. He was matchless 
in skill to detect allegories, to invent anagrams, to 
work out acrostics, and to twist puns and conceits 
into consolatory verses on mournful occasions. The 
" Magnalia " gives this epitaph upon him : — 

" This father will return no more, 
To sit the moderator of thy sages. 
But tell his zeal for thee to after ages, 
His care to guide his flock and feed his lambs, 
By words, works, prayers, psalms, alms, and anagrams." 1 

More interesting than Wilson was Nathaniel 
Ward, minister of Ipswich, who deserves especial 
mention not only because his famous " Simple Cob- 
bler of Aggawam " 2 was the most pungent and amus- 
ing book which early New England produced, but 
because the principles for which he stood were in 
sharpest contrast with those which Vane defended. 
Ward had travelled much and known distinguished 
people ; for instance, Bacon, Archbishop Usher, the 
scholar Paraeus of Heidelberg. At Heidelberg, in- 
deed, he had known the Princess Elizabeth, sister of 
Charles I. of England, and wife of the " Winter 
King " of Bohemia. He had a picturesque reminis- 
cence of Prince Rupert. " I have had him in my 

1 Tyler, Am. Literature, i. 271. 2 Ibid. i. 229, etc. 



24 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1635. 

arms — I wish I had him there now. If I thought 
he would not be angry with me, I would pray hard 
to his maker to make him a right Round-Head, to 
forgive all his sins, and at length to save his soul not- 
withstanding: all his God-damn mes." * The marked 
thing in Ward's book, besides its racy frankness and 
fervor, is its intolerance, curious enough as compared 
with modern liberality or indifference, but not dis- 
pleasing to the Simple Cobbler's contemporaries. 
" My heart hath naturally detested four things : the 
standing of the Apocrypha in the Bible, foreigners 
dwelling in my country to crowd our native subjects 
into the corners of the earth, alchemized coins, toler- 
ations of divers religions, or of one religion in segre- 
gant shapes. Poly-piety is the greatest impiety in 
the world. To authorize an untruth by a toleration 
of state is to build a sconce against the walls of 
heaven, to batter God out of his chair. It is said that 
men ought to have liberty of their conscience, and 
that it is persecution to debar them of it. Let all the 
wits under the heavens lay their heads together and 
find an assertion worse than this, (one excepted) I 
will petition to be chosen the universal idiot of the 
world." 

Ward's straightforward book, though not published 
until ten years after Vane's American sojourn, re- 
flected the sentiments of the New England of that 
time. The modern idea of toleration had scarcely 
been heard of in the world. One of its chief apos- 
tles had, however, appeared, and already uttered the 
great thought which before many years was to have 
from him more emphatic and elaborate development. 

1 Simple Cobbler of Aggaivam, Pulsifer's ed., p. 66. 



1635] MASSACHUSETTS BAY IN 1635. 25 

" In the year 1654," says Cotton Mather, 1 " a cer- 
tain wind-mill in the Low Countries, whirling around 
with extraordinary violence by reason of a violent 
storm then blowing, the stone at length by its rapid 
motion became so intensely hot as to fire the mill, 
from whence the flames, being dispersed by the high 
winds, did set a whole town on fire. But I can tell 
my reader that above twenty years before this there 
was a whole country in America like to be set on 
fire by the rapid motion of a wind-mill in the head of 
one particular man." Such was the judgment of the 
theocracy of Massachusetts Bay upon Roger Wil- 
liams. 

Roger Williams, born in Wales, was now about 
thirty years old. It has been believed he had some 
kinship with Cromwell. He was a blue-coat school- 
boy in London, and was afterwards at Jesus College 
in Oxford. His patron in his young days was the 
great lawyer Sir Edward Coke, for whom his love was 
strong, and whose speeches he took down sometimes 
in short-hand. He became a minister of the Church 
of England, but was soon so thorough a Separatist 
that there was no safety for him before Laud, except 
in flight. " That man of honour and wisdom and 
piety, your dear father," he wrote later in life to a 
daughter of Coke, " was often pleased to call me his 
son ; and truly it was as bitter as death to me, when 
Bishop Laud pursued me out of the land, and my 
conscience was persuaded against the National 
Church and ceremonies and Bishops, beyond the 
conscience of your dear father, — I say it was as bit- 

1 Magnalia, vol. ii. 430. 



26 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1635. 

ter as death to me, when I rode Windsor-way to take 
ship at Bristowe, and saw Stoke House, where that 
blessed man was, and durst not acquaint him with 
my conscience and my flight." 

Roger Williams arrived in Boston Feb. 5, 1631, 
and almost at once took steps which caused him to 
be set down as hot-headed and impracticable. He 
was invited to become teacher to the church in Salem, 
and began his ministrations in that simple structure, 
still in existence, the timbers of which, squared by the 
Puritan broad-axes, were from the trees felled by the 
settlers in the first clearing. When he was called to 
Salem the General Court remonstrated : x " Whereas 
Mr. Williams had refused to join with the congrega- 
tion at Boston, because they would not make a pub- 
lick declaration of their repentance for having com- 
munion with the churches of England, while they 
lived there ; and besides, had declared his opinion 
that the magistrate might not punish the breach of 
the Sabbath, nor any other offence as it was a breach 
of the first table, therefore, they marvelled they would 
choose him without advising with the Council ; and 
withal desiring that they would forbear to proceed 
till they had conferred about it." Palfrey expresses 
the opinion 2 that "to assume at once an attitude of 
opposition to the church argued an eccentricity un- 
promising of usefulness. It would be likely to offend 
at home, if repentance were professed for having 
taken communion with the Church of England." 

In spite of the opposition of the court, Williams 

1 Winthrop''s Jojirnal, April 12, 1631. 

2 Hist, of N.E. i. 407. 



1 635.] MASSACHUSETTS BAY IN 1635. 27 

was ordained at Salem, but presently went to Ply- 
mouth as assistant to the minister there, where he 
disconcerted the Pilgrims by questioning their title 
to their lands as not having been fairly bought from 
the natives, but being by King's- grant, though the 
Pilgrims had made such satisfaction to the natives 
as they valued. Brewster was, no doubt, glad to get 
rid of him, when the uneasy-footed fellow soon after 
went to Salem again, where he broke out once more, 
this time against ministerial associations, which he 
held to be dangerous, as threatening to become pres- 
byteries. He made submission for having questioned 
the Pilgrims' right to their land, and his document 
was burnt ; but on all sides he saw abuses, and to see 
them was for him to hit at them. He insisted on 
women's wearing veils ; then, it is said, abetted Endi- 
cott in cutting the cross out of the English flag. He 
soon recanted his recantation as to denying the valid- 
ity of the King's patent, and insisted as before upon 
the great sin of claiming through that a right to the 
country. Again, he spoke against administering oaths 
to the unregenerate, counselling the Salem church to 
break off all relations with the other churches of the 
colony, because they allowed the practice. His 
church demurred ; whereupon he, though the teacher, 
refused to commune with them, and even refused to 
pray with his wife or ask a blessing at the table where 
she was, because she declined to withdraw from the 
church communion. The magistrates sent Captain 
Underhill to put him quietly on board a ship bound 
for England, a way they had of dealing with embar- 
rassing characters. He, however, had taken to the 



25 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1635. 

woods, where the sight of a spring, running from a 
pleasant hill into a stream which opened into Narra- 
gansett Bay, determined his place of settlement, and 
Providence began. Among his protests, says Hutch- 
inson, occurred this one, which ought not to have 
been ranked with the others : " that to punish a man 
for any matter of his conscience is persecution." 
Williams drove in his criticism at this, that, and the 
other thing, until the whole feeble social fabric was 
shaken, and for the magistrates to treat him as they 
did was, they honestly thought, but proper fidelity 
to their trust. For forty years he remained at Prov- 
idence, changing his opinions sometimes capriciously. 
Though such a stickler for rights of conscience, he 
could " persecute " as well as others. He hated the 
Quakers. " These simple reformers are extremely 
ridiculous in giving thou and thee to everybody, which 
our nation commonly gives to familiars only, and they 
are insufferably proud and contemptuous unto all 
their superiors in using thou to everybody. ... I have 
therefore publicly declared myself, that a due and 
moderate restraint and punishment of those incivili- 
ties, though pretending conscience, is so far from per- 
secution, properly so called, that it is a duty and 
command of God to all mankind." x In other ways, 
at Providence, " the infinite liberty of conscience " 
of some who followed him was abhorrent to him. 

Roger Williams, we may be sure, was a noble fel- 
low, full of power and sincerity, and in his thought as 
to toleration one of the great leaders of the world. 
When he began himself to conduct, in Rhode Island, a 

1 George Fox digged out of his Burrowes, p. 199, etc. 



i635-] MASSACHUSETTS BAY IN 1635. 29 

state, the necessity of limitations probably came home 
to him as it had not done before. He could hardly 
have been as sharp as he afterwards showed himself 
against those who endangered the common welfare 
without feeling himself, in his heart, that the treat- 
ment he had once received in Massachusetts was 
not altogether ill-deserved. A beautiful thing about 
him is the perfect candor and good-nature which 
throughout characterize him. He shows no rancor, 
but in the strait into which Massachusetts presently 
fell renders, as will be seen, at the risk of his life, a 
most essential service to those who had just driven 
him out. 

To these ministerial portraits must be added, 
finally, a most important figure. The great John 
Cotton, so marked a character in Boston during the 
American career of Vane, and vastly influential, as 
will hereafter be shown, in shaping the course of 
things in England, was a bachelor of divinity of Cam- 
bridge, once a fellow and dean of Emanuel College, 
afterwards a great light among the Nonconformists 
of England, and an especial mark of the persecution 
of Laud. He had been rector of the handsome 
St. Botolph's church in Boston, in Lincolnshire, 
where his fame as a preacher became very great. 
He came to America in 1633, at the age of forty-eight. 
Boston had received its name from his English home, 
by way of doing honor to him, and in the idea that 
the compliment might weigh with him as an induce- 
ment to emigrate. He became at once the spiritual 
father and glory of the new town, and the master 
of the New England theocracy. He was a man of 



3<D YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1635. 

most solid virtues and abilities, of herculean vigor, 
and a most " lively and painful " preacher. A four- 
hour sand-glass stood on his study-table, which he 
turned over three times before his day's work was 
finished. As with his profession in general, verse- 
making with him, too, was a recreation, — the result 
usually worthless enough. He thus draws comfort 
from reflections on his past career : 1 

"When I think of the sweet and gracious company 

That in Boston once I had, 
And of the long peace of a fruitful ministry 

For twenty years enjoyed, 
The joy that I found in all that happiness 

Doth still so much refresh me 
That the grief to be cast out into a wilderness 

Doth not so much distress me." 

Here, however, is something, given in Mather's 
" Magnalia," 2 quite different in character ; an effusion 
as pathetic and natural, perhaps, as can be found in 
the volume, usually so dreary, of colonial poetry. 
The lines were written after the death of two chil- 
dren by small-pox. 

" Suffer, saith Christ, your little ones 

To come forth me unto, 
For of such ones my kingdom is, 

Of grace and glory too. 
We do not only suffer them, 

But offer them to thee : 
Now, blessed Lord, let us believe 

Accepted that they be ; 
That thou hast took them in thine arms, 

And on them put thine hand, 
And blessed them with sight of thee 

Wherein our blessings stand." 

Though sometimes at sword's - points with the 

1 Masson, Life of Milton, ii. 555. - Magnalia, vol. i. p. 260. 



i63S-] MASSACHUSETTS BAY IN 1635. 3 1 

churches, his authority constantly grew. In his later 
years Cromwell writes to him as " My dear Friend," 
and his death in 1649 was foretold, as people be- 
lieved, by portents. There appeared " a comet, hav- 
ing a dim light, waxing dimmer and dimmer, a very 
signal testimony that God had then removed a burn- 
ing and a shining light out of the heaven of his 
church here, unto celestial glory above." A portrait 
of this protagonist of New England Puritanism shows 
a face framed in the ample curls of a flowing wig, 
above Geneva bands, — a face remarkable for a cer- 
tain square strength, the eyes far apart, the nose 
massive, the chin firm, the brow broad; a front in- 
dicative of balance and good nerve. His voice was 
sympathetic, his bearing impressive. The innkeeper 
at Derby, having Cotton for a guest, wished him 
gone, since " he was unable to swear while that man 
was under his roof." 



CHAPTER III. 

THE BOY GOVERNOR. 

Harry Vane reached Boston in the ship "Abigail," 
on the 6th of October, 1635. The suspicion of his ship- 
mates, among whom was a character at times scarcely 
less famous than he in after-days, the Rev. Hugh 
Peters, had, long before the voyage was ended, given 
way to deference. As the new company mingled with 
the people of the colony, they prepared a smooth 
way for him to positions of influence. It was part of 
his errand in America to settle, in conjunction with 
Governor Winthrop's son John, Connecticut ; but 
the feeling toward him in Boston, almost at once, 
partook of infatuation, and he remained in Massa- 
chusetts. Before he had been two months in the 
country, on Nov. 30, the town records report : " At 
a general meeting, agreed that none of the members 
of this congregation or inhabitants among us, shall 
sue one another at the law before Mr. H. Vane, and 
the two elders, Mr. Thos. Oliver and Thos. Leverett, 
have had the hearing and the deciding of the cause 
if they can." Before he had been in the colony three 
months, we find him, in connection with Hugh Pe- 
ters, attempting to revise the administration of the 
government in a way implying much presumption. 



1636.] THE BOY GOVERNOR. 33 

A council was called, at which were present Win- 
throp, Dudley, Haynes, at that time Governor, and the 
more influential ministers. Winthrop had thought 
" there should be more lenity in the plantations than 
in a settled state ; " but a different opinion being ex- 
pressed, Winthrop yielded, upon which articles were 
drawn up for a better ordering of matters. Vane 
and Hugh Peters here work in concert in supersed- 
ing the policy of the prudent pioneers, but we shall 
presently find Peters sharply rebuking Vane for arro- 
gance. 

At the first election after Vane's arrival, March 25, 
1636, he was chosen Governor. A noteworthy move 
of the same General Court was the appointment of a 
committee as follows : * The Governor, Deputy Gov- 
ernor, Thos. Dudley, John Haynes, Richard Belling- 
ham, Mr. Cotton, Mr. Peters, and Mr. Shepherd 
" are intreated to make a draught of lawes agreeable 
to the word of God, wch may be the ffundamentalls 
of this comonwealth, and to present the same to the 
nexte Genrall Court." A similar charge had been 
given, the preceding year, to a smaller committee, 2 
which appears to have done nothing. Of course the 
body of " fundamentals " contemplated was not in- 
tended to be a written constitution, — that is, an 
instrument binding the Legislature : the charter 
stood in place of that. A code of laws for the infe- 
rior courts was rather in the minds of the movers. 
" It is ordered that in the meane tyme the magis- 
trates and their assosiates shall pceede in the courts 
to heare and determine all causes according to the 

1 Records of Mass. i. p. 174. 2 Ibid. p. 147. 



34 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1636. 

lawes now established, and where there is noe law, 
then as near the lawe of God as they can ; and for 
all business out of court for wch there is no certaine 
rule yet sett downe, those of the standing Counsell, or 
some two of them shall take order by their best dis- 
cretion, that they may be ordered and ended accord- 
ing to the rule of God's word." It is quite possible, 
however, that the incident has a connection with the 
development of the idea of a written constitution. 
In years long after this, Vane was to make the first 
clear exposition of the Constitutional Idea, showing 
how the fundamentals must be laid down by which 
a free state shall be governed, and so anticipating 
what is to-day the most unique and one of the most 
valuable features of the American polity. It is not 
unlikely that his connection in his Massachusetts 
days with this committee had something to do with 
this interesting work of his later time. 

The new Governor was hailed by the colony with 
more ceremony and rejoicing than had ever yet 
been shown on a similar occasion, and the ships in 
the harbor signalized his election with " a volley of 
great shot." Young Harry, no doubt remembering 
the state he had so often witnessed at the pompous 
European courts, assumed a circumstance that had 
not before been seen. Four sergeants, with hal- 
berds, steel-caps on their heads, bandoliers, and small 
arms, marched before him whenever he went to the 
General Court or to church. Within a week of his 
accession he carried through successfully a piece of 
public business presenting some difficulties, and of 
considerable importance to the colony. Shortly be- 



1636.] THE BOY GOVERNOR. 35 

fore, the " Saint Patrick," a ship belonging to Went- 
worth, Lord Deputy of Ireland, arrived in the harbor. 
The Lieutenant of the Castle went aboard of her as 
she came up the harbor and made her strike her flag, 
which Palmer, her master, regarded as a great injury, 
since the Castle, to which he struck, had no colors 
flying. The fact was that the New England planta- 
tion was disposed even now to carry things in a most 
independent spirit. Endicott, not long before, had 
cut the cross out of the English flag as an idolatrous 
symbol, and the settlers were by no means ready to 
recognize it as their ensign. But though disposed to 
proceed with the high hand, the planters were wary. 
Wentworth was not a man to brave rashly. The 
Magistrates tried to satisfy Palmer by making the 
Lieutenant acknowledge on board the ship his error, 
" that so all the ship's company might receive satis- 
faction, lest the Lord Deputy should have been in- 
formed that we had offered that discourtesy to his 
ship which we had never offered to any before." x 

Palmer seems to have been satisfied, but the trou- 
bles as to the shipping were not over. Fifteen 
vessels, for those days large, lay at anchor before the 
town. The distinction between honest sailor and 
buccaneer in those times was much less marked than 
now, and the people naturally felt themselves to be 
in some peril, if so many crews of lawless men were 
allowed to lie at their very doors, under no restraint. 
Enemies might readily slip in, if there were no chal- 
lenging ; and hurtful goods be imported, if there were 
no care. To manage the matter required some deli- 

1 Winthrop, i. 186. 



36 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1636. 

cacy. Probably the fifteen ships, acting in concert, 
carried guns enough, easily to blow the colony into 
the air. Vane's expedient was to invite the captains 
to dinner; then, when all were in good-humor through 
the rich entertainment and the affability of the high- 
born young Governor, he frankly propounded to 
them the embarrassment, and gained their assent to 
certain articles 1 which ensured the public safety: 
" I st that all ships, which should come after this year 
should come to an anchor before they came at the 
fort, except they did send their boat before, and 
did satisfy the commander that they were friends. 

2. That, before they offered any goods to sale, they 
would deliver an invoice, &.c., and give the gover- 
nour, &.c. twenty-four hours' liberty to refuse &.c. 

3. That their men might not stay on shore (except 
upon necessary business) after sunset. — These they 
all willingly consented unto." Thus with a little 
tact and good-natured condescension, Vane put a 
bridle upon the wild sea-horses, who seemed likely 
to ride rough-shod over the germinating state. 

The good understanding thus produced was at 
once strained almost to breaking, the difficulty as to 
the flag coming up in a new quarter. Among the 
English ships that came to the colony was one called, 
by a felicity of fortune, the " Hector," whose crew, be- 
fore the weak authorities of the plantation, were loud- 
mouthed to a point that seemed likely to make much 
trouble. The " Hector's " mate, one Miller, declared 
that because the King's colors were not shown at the 
fort, the colonists were all traitors and rebels. Vane 

1 Winthrop, i. 1S7. 



1636.] THE BOY GOVERNOR. 2)7 

sent for the " Hector's " captain, whose mood was still 
genial, perhaps, through the steam of the Governor's 
punch, and the captain promised to deliver the loose- 
tongued mate to the authorities. The marshal and 
four sergeants were sent to the ship to bring him 
ashore, but the crew, bewhiskered and cutlassed, 
swaggered before the majesty of the colony, and 
refused to give up their officer. The captain was 
forced to go himself, and succeeded in bringing the 
mate to the land, where he was committed ; where- 
upon the sturdy mariners so stormed that the Magis- 
trates were obliged to place him again on the " Hec- 
tor's" deck, obtaining an engagement, however, that 
he should be produced at a time specified. Miller 
appeared at the time, to the Magistrates' relief, in a 
softened mood. He confessed to his words, and re- 
tracted them. For the moment the embarrassment 
was overcome, but a matter had been opened which 
might have grave consequences. The colony had 
made itself liable to sharp blame from those who were 
disposed to conform to the powers that were, and in 
the circumstances such criticism as that of the " Hec- 
tor's" mate was natural. The plantation was not 
ready to go to the length of defying the power of 
Charles. Vane, in the presence of the Magistrates, 
talked the subject over good-naturedly with his 
friends, the captains. They declared it was quite 
possible they might be examined in England as to 
what colors were flying in Massachusetts, and they 
would like to see the King's flag displayed that they 
might give a good report. The discussion on the 
point was grave. The authorities slept upon it, and 



38 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1636. 

counselled with the wisest heads, but were no nearer 
an agreement the second dav than the first. At last 
Vane, supported by Dudley and Cotton, determined 
that though the colony were fully persuaded the cross 
in the ensign was idolatrous and might not be set up 
in the colony's flag, yet that the ensign might be set 
up at the fort, since the fort was maintained in the 
King's name. It was accordingly done, Vane bor- 
rowing colors from the " Saint Patrick," since there 
was no ensign in the colony. Winthrop, however, 
and many others washed their hands of the conces- 
sion, admitting the Governor's right to act, but deny- 
ing the expediency of such yielding. It is hard to 
see that the young head in this affair was not more 
prudent and reasonable than the older ones, whose 
policy, if carried out, might have brought upon New 
England an application of " Thorough " that would 
have quite wiped it out. 1 

Vane had been but a few weeks in the Governor's 
chair when a move was made in the colony indicat- 
ing that the days had come to an end when .the 
surveyors thought it unnecessary to lay out a road 
westward beyond Watertown, as it would never be 
required. The settlement at Musketaquid was pro- 
jected, the foundation of Concord, the first town 
beyond tide-water in New England. The leading 
spirits in the movement were Major Willard, an in- 
fluential emigrant from Kent, with a following of 
sturdy yeoman neighbors, who now went with him 
westward, and the accomplished Peter Bulkeley, a 
man of fifty-three, who had been a fellow of St. John's 

1 Winthrop, i. 189. 



1636.] THE BOY GOVERNOR. 39 

College at Cambridge, a minister in Bedfordshire, and 
had been forced by Laud to emigrate in the same 
year in which Vane had come. Vane and Winthrop, 
as Governor and Deputy, were invited to be present 
at Newtown, at the gathering of the church which 
was to proceed thus into the wilderness, " but took it 
in ill part and thought not fit to go, because they 
had not come to them before, to acquaint them with 
their purpose." Whether or not the officials were 
unreasonably punctilious, or showed only just resent- 
ment at a slight, there are no data for judging. 

Far more important than the settlement of Con- 
cord was the departure of Hooker with the Connecti- 
cut colonists, which took place in the early summer. 
Thomas Hooker, a stout-hearted preacher, once fel- 
low of Emanuel College, Cambridge, the associate of 
John Eliot in England, and afterwards an exile in 
Holland, was a figure scarcely less prominent among 
the candlesticks in the New England churches than 
John Cotton himself. The latter, although they had 
quarrels, described him, after his death, as " Farel, 
Viret, and Calvin, [the three Geneva worthies,] 
rolled into one. 

" A son of thunder and a shower of rain, 
A pourer forth of lovely oracles, 
In saving souls the sum of miracles." 1 

When this strong character, a mature man of fifty, 
proposed to set out to Connecticut, the colony was 
profoundly stirred. With him were associated other 
men of mark, notably John Haynes, who had just 
before been Governor. The matter was debated pro 

1 Masson, Life of Milton, ii. 537. 



40 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1636. 

and con. Hooker alleged they wanted room for their 
cattle, and that the towns were too near together ; 
that Connecticut was fruitful and commodious ; and 
that if unoccupied by them, it might fall into the 
hands of the Dutch, or of Englishmen not in sym- 
pathy with themselves. 1 On the other side, the inex- 
pediency of dismembering what was already weak was 
urged, among other considerations. When it came 
to vote in the General Court, permission barely 
w r as given. Of the twenty-five deputies ten opposed, 
and among the Magistrates only the Governor and 
two Assistants were favorable. Liberty was at last 
granted, and in 1636 the emigrants set out. Vane 
must have regarded the affair with great interest, for 
he, in company with young John Winthrop and 
Hugh Peters, had a commission to manage for Lord 
Say and Sele, Lord Brooke, and others their patent 
of Connecticut. The commissioners proclaimed the 
rights of their principals, which the emigrants ac- 
knowledged, and we may imagine Vane looking on 
in the lovely June weather as the company started 
from Newtown. They were one hundred in num- 
ber, and drove before them a herd of one hundred 
and sixty cattle. When it was necessary, they cut 
a path through the woods, and bridged streams too 
deep for fording with the trees they felled upon the 
shore. They slept by night in huts or wagons, and 
varied their diet with the strawberries then just in 
season. The wife of the minister, Mrs. Hooker, was 
carried in a horse litter, being sick. The journey 

1 See Johnston's Connecticut for was a democratic secession from 
the claim that Hooker's emigration the oligarchy of Massachusetts. 



1636.] THE BOY GOVERNOR. 4 1 

occupied a fortnight. Other emigrants from Dor- 
chester and Watertown followed them during the 
summer, and the towns of Hartford, Wethersfield, 
and Windsor were founded. 

All went well at first, but the skies soon became 
clouded. Says Winthrop in a graphic narrative : * 
" John Gallop, with one man more and two little 
boys, coming from Connecticut in a bark of twenty 
tons, intending to put in at Long Island to trade, 
and being at the mouth of the harbor, were forced 
by a sudden change of the wind to bear up for Block 
Island or Fisher's Island, lying before Naragansett, 
where they espied a small pinnace, which drawing 
near unto, they found to be Mr. Oldham's (an old 
planter and member of Watertown congregation, 
who had been long out a-trading, having with him 
only two English boys, and two Indians of Naragan- 
sett). So they hailed him but had no answer ; and 
the deck was full of Indians and goods. Where- 
upon they suspected they had killed John Oldham, 
and the rather, because the Indians let slip and set 
up sail, being two miles from shore, and the wind 
and tide being off the shore of the island, whereby 
they drove towards the main at Naragansett. Where- 
upon they went ahead of them, and having but two 
pieces and two pistols, and nothing but duck-shot, 
they bear up near the Indians, (who stood ready 
armed with guns, pikes, and swords) and let fly 
among them, and so galled them as they all gate un- 
der hatches. Then they stood off again, and return- 
ing with a good gale, they stemmed her upon the 

1 Vol. i. 189, etc. 



42 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1636. 

quarter and almost overset her, which so frighted the 
Indians, as six of them leaped overboard and were 
drowned. Yet they durst not board her but stood 
off again, and fitted their anchor, so as, stemming 
her the second time, they bored her bow through 
with their anchor, and so sticking fast to her they 
made divers shot through her, (being but inch board) 
and so raked her fore and aft, as they must needs 
kill or hurt some of the Indians ; but seeing none of 
them come forth, they gate loose from her and stood 
off again. Then four or five more of the Indians 
leaped into the sea, and were likewise drowned. So 
there being now but four left in her, they boarded 
her; whereupon one. Indian came up and yielded; 
him they bound and put into hold. Then another 
yielded whom they bound. But John Gallop being 
well acquainted with their skill to untie themselves, 
if two of them be together, and having no place to 
keep them asunder, he threw them bound into the 
sea ; and looking about they found John Oldham un- 
der an old seine, stark naked, his head cleft to the 
brains, and his hands and legs cut as if they had 
been cutting them off, and yet warm. So they put 
him into the sea ; but could not get to the other two 
Indians, who were in a little room underneath with 
their swords. So they took the goods which were 
left, and the sails, &.c, and towed the boat away ; 
but night coming on and the wind rising, they were 
forced to turn her off, and the wind carried her to the 
Naragansett shore." 

This bold exploit happened July 20th, and is worth 
giving in detail, because it brought on the fierce 



1636.] THE BOY GOVERNOR. 43 

Pequot war, and also because it was the first naval 
en easement in which Vane, destined to become one 
of the greatest of naval administrators, had occasion 
to take any vivid interest. Block Island was under 
Narragansett rule. The colony demanded satisfac- 
tion of the Narragansetts, and soon became embroiled 
with their neighbors, the Pequots. These, the most 
ferocious and powerful of the New England tribes, 
who not long before this time had thrust themselves 
in from the north to occupy the greater part of Con- 
necticut, had been for some time disaffected. 

A picturesque element in the population of the 
colonies was the leaven of veteran soldiers, who, 
trained among the hazards of that stormy century, 
had grown to love danger, and had exchanged the 
powder-smoke of the Thirty Years' War or Nether- 
landish disorders for an atmosphere equally full of 
peril, by the lair of wild-cat and savage. The oldest 
among these was Dudley, who nearly thirty years be- 
fore had commanded a troop in the wars of Henri 
Quatre, and who was old enough to have cheered 
over the defeat of the Spanish Armada. 1 He had 
hardly strength now to take the field, but was a 
leader in counsel, carrying his soldier's ways into the 
deliberations of the Magistrates. Standish of Ply- 
mouth was a younger man, but still a veteran. 2 Pat- 
rick had been in the guard of Prince Maurice of 
Nassau, and was well able to discipline the Boston 
train-band. Lieutenant Lion Gardiner was a skilful 
engineer, 3 and was to make good his reputation at the 

1 Palfrey, i. 303. 2 Markham, The Fighting Veres, pp. 388, 458. 
3 Ibid. pp. 389, 458. 



44 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1636. 

fort at Saybrook. Underhill had bearded Spaniard 
and Frenchman, and talked familiarly with Count 
Nassau. But chief among these singed and sun- 
burnt veterans was John Mason, who had served 
under Sir Horace Vere, as comrade of Fairfax and 
Skippon, and with equal opportunities might perhaps 
have become equally famous with those great cham- 
pions of the English Commonwealth. These old sol- 
diers were now about to find their opportunity. 

Endicott, who at first had been sent with ninety 
men to put matters into better condition among the 
Indians about Long Island Sound, had only made 
things worse. At Block Island and on the mainland 
adjacent, massacres were perpetrated and crops and 
wigwams burned. The effect was not to intimi- 
date, but to incense. In his indiscriminate harrying, 
Endicott touched the Pequots, and Sassacus, their 
energetic chief, sent deputies at once to the Narra- 
gansetts to induce them to join with him against the 
English in a war of extermination. To this the Nar- 
ragansetts were not at all indisposed. Miantonimo, 
their chief, had professed readiness to make atone- 
ment for Oldham's murder, and could not have felt 
otherwise than that the punishment inflicted through 
Endicott upon the Block Islanders was excessive. 
Had an alliance been formed between the two power- 
ful tribes, the English could scarcely have escaped 
destruction. The alliance was prevented, and there 
is nothing more beautiful in New England history 
than the story of its prevention. Wrote Roger Wil- 
liams to Captain John Mason in 1670/ when both 

1 G. E. Ellis, Life of Mason, in Sparks's Am. Biog. 2"'! ser. vol. iii. 
p. 360. 



1636.] THE BOY GOVERNOR. 45 

were old men : " When, the next year after my ban- 
ishment, the Lord drew the bow of the Pequot war 
against the country, . . . the Lord helped me im- 
mediately to put my life into my hand, and scarce 
acquainting my wife, to ship myself all alone, in a 
poor canoe, and to cut through a stormy wind with 
great seas, every minute in hazard of my life, to the 
sachem's house. Three days and nights my business 
forced me to lodge and mix with the bloody Pequot 
ambassadors whose hands and arms reeked with the 
blood of my countrymen, murdered and massacred 
by them on Connecticut river, and from whom I 
could not but nightly look for their bloody knives at 
my own throat also." 

To be sure, it may be said that Roger Williams 
was saving his own colony here, as well as Massachu- 
setts ; but looking at the matter in the light of his 
after career, it is plain that he showed a fine magna- 
nimity as he sought to ward off death from those 
who had driven him forth. How extraordinary the 
courage, too, which made it possible for him, braving 
a stormy sea in a light canoe, to trust himself in the 
depths of the woods to very doubtful friends, while 
the fiercest savages of New England, to some extent 
justly incensed, poured incitements into the ears of 
the Narragansetts ! His heroism prevailed. He had 
paid fairly for his land, and in the time since his 
arrival at the brook-side, under the pleasant hill, had 
done the Narragansetts many a favor. Miantonimo 
hearkened to his words, and the foiled Pequots with- 
drew sullenly. While Roger Williams counteracted 
their efforts to the east, the Mohegans to the west of 



46 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1636. 

their territory, led by their chieftain Uncas, remained 
friendly to the English. The Pequots were left to 
fight the battle alone. 

Early in July, Vane had made a progress through 
his small dominion, the whole of which, we may sup- 
pose, he up to this time had never seen. Starting 
northward, he made a public entrance into Salem on 
the 9th. In the absence of any records, Mr. Upham 
indulges his imagination after a pleasant fashion as to 
the exact manner in which the young Governor may 
have been received. 1 But he was soon at home 
again. John Gallop's recital had made all feel that a 
desperate war must come. On October 2 1 , the out- 
come of Williams's effort was seen, and it began to 
seem possible that the colony might be preserved. 
" Miantunnomoh, the sachem of Narragansett, being 
sent for by the Governour, came to Boston with two 
of Canonicus's sons, and another sachem, and near 
twenty sannups. The Governour sent twenty mus- 
keteers to meet him at Roxbury. He came to Bos- 
ton about noon. The Governour had called together 
most of the Magistrates and ministers to give counte- 
nance to our proceedings, and to advise with them 
about the terms of peace. It was dinner-time, and 
the sachems and their council dined by themselves in 
the same room where the Governour dined, and their 
sannups were sent to the inn. After dinner, Mian- 
tunnomoh declared what he had to say to us." 2 The 
Narragansetts wished for peace. Next morning the 
Governor met them again, and a treaty was signed, 

1 Life of Vane, Sparks's Am. Biog. 1st ser. vol. iv. p. 118. 

2 Winthrop, i. 198. 



1636.] THE BOY GOVERNOR. 47 

the articles of which were to be interpreted to them 
by Roger Williams, who had become accomplished 
in the native tongue. After dinner they took their 
leave, escorted by musketeers, and were finally dis- 
missed with a salute. It may be believed that the 
scene was full of interesting traits, as the young Gov- 
ernor came down from the mansion in what is now 
Pemberton Square, where he lived with Cotton, pre- 
ceded by his halberdiers, while the savages, in their 
eagle's feathers, fringes, and paint, waited to meet 
him. 

The danger from the savages was by no means the 
only one by which the colony was now threatened. 
Compared with the points, dipped in bitterest Calvin- 
ism, of a theological controversy of the 1 7th century, 
the Pequot tomahawks present a prospect positively 
genial, and the historian turns with real reluctance 
from beneath the latter to impale himself upon the 
bristling details of the great word-war in which Mrs. 
Anne Hutchinson was the central figure. 

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson had emigrated to New 
England about two years before the period which we 
have now reached, in the same ship which brought 
a copy of the dangerous commission issued by the 
King to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York 
and nine others of the Privy Council, to regulate for- 
eign plantations and call in charters. Her home had 
been Alford, near Boston, in Lincolnshire, whence 
she had come accompanied by her husband, who, 
although afterward in conspicuous positions, was 
plainly the weaker member of the partnership. In 



48 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1636. 

New England she took no satisfaction in any preach- 
ing except that of Cotton, whose parishioner she 
had formerly been in England, and that of her 
brother-in-law, John Wheelwright, a strong, indepen- 
dent character. On the voyage, the shipmates of 
Mrs. Hutchinson became aware that by the Puritan 
standards her opinions were not sound, and she made 
enemies who afterward caused her trouble. When 
she and her husband sought to be admitted to the 
Boston church, information was given of her singu- 
larities, and the matter was delayed. At first, how- 
ever, she made a good impression upon all ; she 
was full of neighborly kindness, helpful to people in 
sickness, and acquired influence by remarkable men- 
tal ability and force of character. Her home was 
where now stands the Old Corner Book Store, with 
the house of Winthrop nearly opposite, and the 
house of Cotton and Vane a few rods back to the 
northwest. 

In October, 1636, Winthrop first makes mention 
of trouble from her. " One Mrs. Hutchinson, a 
member of the church of Boston, a woman of ready 
wit and bold spirit, brought over with her two dan- 
gerous errors : 1st, that the person of the Holy Ghost 
dwells in a justified person. 2nd, that no sanctifi- 
cation can help to evidence to us our justification. 
From these two grew many branches, as, 1st, our 
union with the Holy Ghost, so as a Christian remains 
dead to every spiritual action, and hath no gifts nor 
graces other than such as are in hypocrites, nor any 
other sanctification but the Holy Ghost himself." 
This is not very clear, and it would be only waste of 



1636.] THE BOY GOVERNOR. 49 

time to attempt to make it clearer. The points of 
the controversy were not at all understood by many 
who took part, according to reports to be presently 
cited, and before the trouble was over we find the 
leaders so explaining their views that the difference 
was reduced to a minimum. Nevertheless, a schism 
of the bitterest rent asunder the New England 
Church. On one side were Mrs. Hutchinson, " the 
masterpiece of woman's wit," Cotton with all his pres- 
tige, and Wheelwright ; the greater part of the Bos- 
ton church stood also with these ; and here, too, 
Vane took his place, entering into the wordy war with 
all possible zest. Few men of the English race have 
possessed to any greater degree the faculty of plain 
speech, or greater power in practical life. With it all, 
however, he was, after a strange fashion, a dreamer, 
devoted, when he could find leisure for it, to rhap- 
sody and abstruse discussion, unintelligible to the 
men of his time, and the despair of those of the pres- 
ent day who seek to follow him. In the Hutchin- 
sonian turmoil he was in a congenial atmosphere, and 
although he made at the time certain most note- 
worthy utterances which will presently be considered, 
his speech in great part, probably, was not less blind 
than that of his fellow-stru^orlers. On the other side 
in the controversy stood almost unanimously the 
country churches (the distinction between town and 
country had already become marked) and five mem- 
bers of the Boston church ; but of these five, two 
were among the strongest men of the colony, Win- 
throp and Wilson. 

The men of the Boston church had been in the 



5<D YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1636. 

habit of meeting to talk over the sermons of Wilson 
and Cotton, and in imitation of this Mrs. Hutchin- 
son had convened the women, at one time as often 
as twice a week. Sometimes the number amounted 
to one hundred, among them the principal women 
of the colony. Cotton and Wheelwright she com- 
mended as being under a " covenant of grace ; " but 
with a boldness which increased as time went on, she 
condemned the other ministers as under a "cove- 
nant of works." As the schism deepened, conduct 
and language grew violent. When Wilson rose in 
his place to speak, Mrs. Hutchinson and her follow- 
ers would withdraw from the meeting-house. Writes 
a fierce anti-Hutchinsonian : 1 " Now, oh their bold- 
ness, pride, insolency, and alienations from their old 
and dearest friends, the disturbances, divisions, con- 
tentions, they raised amongst us, both in church and 
state, and in families, setting division betwixt man 
and wife ! . . . Now the faithful ministers of Christ 
must have dung cast upon their faces, and be no 
better than legal preachers, Baal's priests, etc. . . . 
Now, after our sermons were ended at our public 
lectures, you might have seen half a dozen pistols 
discharged at the face of the preacher (I mean so 
many objections made by the opinionists in the open 
assembly against the doctrine delivered, if it suited 
not their new fancies), to the marvellous weakening 
of holy truths delivered. Now you might have seen 
many of the opinionists rising up, and contemptu- 

1 Rev. Thomas Weld, A Short and Libertines, that infected the 
Story of the Rise, Reign, andRuin Churches of New England. Pref- 
of the Anti-nonrians, Familists, ace. 



1636.] THE BOY GOVERNOR. 5 1 

ously turning their backs upon the faithful pastor of 
that church, and going forth from the assembly when 
he began to pray or preach." 

Winthrop is so fair-minded that all historians have 
put perfect faith in the records of his diary, whether 
he speaks of friend or foe. Although he was a 
party in this strife, we may repose in his candor. 
He does his best to tell what Vane and what he 
himself believed. 1 " The Governor Mr. Vane, a wise 
and godly gentleman, held, with Mr. Cotton and 
many others, the indwelling of the person of the 
Holy Ghost in a believer, and went so far beyond 
the rest, as to maintain a personal union with the 
Holy Ghost ; but the deputy [Winthrop himself], 
with the pastor and divers others, denied both ; and 
the question proceeded so far by disputation (in writ- 
ing, for the peace' sake of the church, which all were 
tender of) as at length they could not find the person 
of the Holy Ghost in scripture, nor in the primitive 
churches three hundred years after Christ. So that 
all agreeing in the chief matter of substance, viz., 
that the Holy Ghost is God, and that he doth dwell 
in the believers (as the Father and Son both are said 
also to do), but whether by his gifts and power only, 
or by any other manner of presence, seeing the scrip- 
ture doth not declare it, — it was earnestly desired 
that the word person might be foreborne, being a 
term of human invention, and tending to doubtful 
disputance in this case." 

Of far greater interest than this dreary controversy 
is the minute in the colonial records, 2 October 28, 

1 Winthrop, i. 206, 207. 2 Records of Mass. Bay, i. 183. 



52 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1636. 

1636, of the gift by the General Court, under the 
presidency of Henry Vane, of four hundred pounds 
for the establishment of Harvard College; the first 
time, according to Edward Everett, that " the peo- 
ple, by their representatives, ever gave their own 
money to found a place of education." 1 

During the autumn weeks, while the strength of 
the terrible Pequots was gathering in the woods 
about, such discord was beginning to reign in the 
colony, and the Governor of twenty-four may well 
have believed that he had undertaken more than he 
could manage. The General Court having been 
summoned, he begged leave to resign his office, be- 
cause " he had letters from his friends in England 
which necessarily required his presence there." His 
popularity was still great* and^s> the people urged 
him to remain, " the Governor brake jorth into tears, 
and professed that howsoever the causes propounded 
for his departure were such as did concern the utter 
ruin of his outward estate, yet he would rather have 
hazarded all than have gone from them at this time, 
if something else had not pressed him more ; viz., 
the inevitable danger of God's judgments to come 
upon us for these differences and dissensions which 
he saw amongst us, and the scandalous imputations 
brought upon himself as if he should be the cause 
of all, and therefore he thought it best for him to 
give place for a time." 2 The Governor had need 
to be sorely troubled, and his tears were natural 
enough in one so young. The Court refused con- 
sent to his going on those grounds ; whereupon Vane, 

1 Palfrey, i. 548. 2 Winthrop, i. 207, 208. 



1636.] THE BOY GOVERNOR. 53 

showing some vacillation, recalled his plea, declaring 
" that the reasons concerning his own estate were 
sufficient for his departure," and that as for the other 
plea, " it had slipped him out of his passion, and not 
out of judgment." Upon this the Court consented 
to his departure. The Boston church, however, re- 
sisted his going so strongly that he was prevailed 
upon to stay. 

Henceforth through his American life there was 
nothing but trouble for Vane, and he met it with 
resolution. At a meeting of Magistrates and elders, 
convened to reconcile, if possible, jarring parties, he 
was taken sharply to task. At Vane's first coming 
we have seen him joined with Hugh Peters in calling 
Winthrop to account in a somewhat presumptuous 
way. Peters had become a great figure in the colony, 
commending himself perhaps as much by a certain 
practical good sense which he showed as regards the 
material development of the colony as by his spirit- 
ual ministrations. He was now the spokesman of 
the ministers, who, in the midst of the " patheticall 
passages " connected with the young man's desire to 
go home, were very plain in their fault-finding. One 
of the Magistrates declaring that he would utter 
freely what he held different from others, 1 " the Gov- 
ernor said that he would be content to do the like, 
but that he understood that the ministers were about 
it in a church way, &c, which he spoke upon this 
occasion : the ministers had met a little before, and 
had drawn into heads all the points wherein they 
suspected Mr. Cotton did differ from them, and had 

1 Winthrop, i. 209, etc. 



54 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1636. 

propounded them to him, and pressed him to a direct 
answer, affirmative or negative to every one ; which 
he had promised and taken time for. This meeting 
being spoken of in the Court the day before, the Gov- 
ernor took great offence at it as being without his 
privity &c, which this day Mr. Peters told him 
as plainly of (with all reverence), and how it had sad- 
ded the ministers' spirits that he should be jealous of 
their meetings, or seem to restrain their liberty, &c. 
The Governor excused his speech as sudden and 
upon a mistake. Mr. Peters told him also, that be- 
fore he came, within less than two years since, the 
churches were in peace, &c. The Governor an- 
swered, that the light of the gospel brings a* sword, 
and the children of the bond-woman would persecute 
those of the free-woman. Mr. Peters also besought 
him humbly to consider his youth and short experi- 
ence in the things of God, and to beware of peremp- 
tory conclusions, which he perceived him to be very 
apt unto. He declared further that he had observed, 
both in the Low Countries and here, three principal 
causes of new opinions and divisions thereupon : 
1. Pride, new notions lift up the mind, &c. 2. Idle- 
ness. 3. [a blank.] " 

Winthrop may be still further quoted to show what 
straw the generation was threshing, and in what con- 
fusion of mind the disputants themselves were : " Mr. 
Wilson made a very sad speech of the condition of 
the churches. . . . Mr. Cotton had laid down this 
ground, that evident sanctification was an evidence 
of justification, and thereupon had taught that in 
cases of spiritual desertion, true desires of sanctifica- 



1 637.] THE BOY GOVERNOR. 55 

tion was found to be sanctification ; and further, if a 
man were laid so flat upon the ground as he could 
see no desires, &c., but only, as a bruised reed did 
wait at the feet of Christ, yet here was matter of 
comfort for this, as found to be true." Wilson's crit- 
icisms were taken very ill by the Boston church in 
which " the Governour pressed it violently against 
him, and [as did] also all the congregation, except 
the deputy [Winthrop himself] and one or two more, 
and many of them with much bitterness and re- 
proaches. ... It was strange to see how the com- 
mon people were led, by example, to condemn him in 
that which divers of them did not understand, nor the 
rule which he was supposed to have broken." 

In March, 1637, the ministers assembled at Boston 
determined to bring things to some issue. How 
could the world be more out of joint ! " A general 
fast was kept in all the churches. The occasion was 
the miserable estate of the churches in Germany ; the 
calamities upon our native country, the Bishops mak- 
ing havoc in the churches, putting down the faithful 
ministers and advancing papist ceremonies and doc- 
trines, the plague raging exceedingly, and famine and 
sword threatening them ; the dangers of those at Con- 
necticut, and of ourselves also, by the Indians ; and 
the dissensions in our churches." 1 As regards the 
Indian war, terrible stories filled the ears of the set- 
tlers. The Mohegans were their friends and to 
some extent softened by civilizing influences, yet if 
the Mohegans took a prisoner, forthwith he was put 
to torture. Strips of flesh were torn from him while 

1 Winthrop, i. 213. 



56 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1637. 

he lived and devoured by his captors before his eyes, 
until Englishmen present held their pistols to the 
heads of the victims and out of mercy put them out 
of misery. From such events in their own camps 
the settlers drew rueful conclusions as to what the 
English underwent who fell into the hands of the 
Pequots. The contortions, groans, and devout ejac- 
ulations of their brethren in their death-struggles 
were caught with diabolical mimicry by the Pequots, 
who then from the opposite shore of some deep 
stream, or some thicket or hill-brow not easily 
reached, used them as taunts and jibes against their 
foes. In the month of the fast, Lion Gardiner, the 
stout soldier who held the fort at Saybrook, at the 
mouth of the Connecticut, in the midst of the dan- 
ger, sent to Vane a horribly suggestive token of the 
fate that might overtake them all. It was the rib of 
a slain soldier pierced through by a Pequot arrow. 
The idea, it seems, had prevailed that a savage arrow 
had no force. 1 

Nor were the internal controversies and the Indian 
war the only occasions for anxiety. The danger of 
an application of " Thorough " by Laud and Strafford 
became more and more imminent, as the story of the 
dissensions tended to create the impression in Eng- 
land that the colony was falling to pieces. An oc- 
currence took place upon the occasion of the sailing 
of a ship for England which would be amusing were 
it not so pathetic and pitiable. Cotton and Wilson, 
who were fighting like deadly enemies at the heads 
of the two factions, fearing that news would be car- 

1 G. E. Ellis, Life of Mason, p. 362. 



i637-] THE BOY GOVERNOR. 57 

ried which would result in the dreaded interference 
from home, laid aside for the moment their hostility, 
to whitewash, as far as possible, the melancholy situa- 
tion. Cotton spoke to the ship's company * " about 
the differences, and willed them to tell our country- 
men that all the strife amongst us was about magni- 
fying the grace of God ; one party seeking to advance 
the grace of God within us, and the other to advance 
the grace of God towards us (meaning by the one 
justification, and by the other sanctification), and so 
bade them tell them, that if there were any among 
them that would strive for grace, they should come 
hither." Wilson followed Cotton in an address " by 
occasion whereof no man could tell (except some few 
who knew the bottom of the matter) where any dif- 
ference was." 

Though when need was, the fighters could make 
their mountains thus seem like mole-hills, the opera- 
tion did not bring them to their senses. " Every oc- 
casion increased the contention, and caused great 
alienation of minds. ... It began to be as common 
here to distinguish between men, by being under a 
covenant of grace or a covenant of works, as in other 
countries between Protestants and Papists." 2 The 
General Court at last, where the anti-Hutchinso- 
nians were in a majority, proceeded to extremities. 
The ministers said " that in all such heresies or 
errors of any church-members as are manifest and 
dangerous to the state, the court may proceed with- 
out tarrying for the church." In spite of the Boston 
church, therefore, one Greensmith, a zealous Hutch- 

1 Winthrop, i. 213. 2 Ibid. i. 213. 



58 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1637. 

insonian, was " committed to the marshal," and 
Wheelwright was censured. Against this Vane and 
a few deputies protested. His prestige, however, was 
waning fast. To show its displeasure with Boston, 
the Court concluded that its meetings should be held 
elsewhere, and it was moved that its next session, in 
May, when the important business of the choice of a 
new Governor was to be attended to, should take 
place at Newtown. Vane as presiding officer refused 
to put the matter to vote. Winthrop, Deputy Gov- 
ernor, also refused, as a Boston man, though he and 
Vane were now at sword's points. Endicott put the 
question, and it was carried. 

The Court met, May 17, at Newtown, both parties 
incensed to such a degree that bloodshed and civil 
war were scarcely avoided. " So soon as the Court 
was set, about one of the clock, a petition was pre- 
ferred by those of Boston." Vane declared that it 
should be read at once, which Winthrop opposed on 
the ground that it was out of order until the first 
business of the Court had been attended to, the mat- 
ter of the election. " Mr. Wilson, the minister, in his 
zeal, got upon the bough of a tree, and there made a 
speech advising the people to look to their charter, 
and to consider the present work of the day, which 
was designed for the choosing, &c. His speech was 
well received by the people, who presently called out, 
' Election! Election ! ' which turned the scale." 1 Vane 
shouted his protest, but the election was held in spite 
of him, Winthrop being made Governor and Dudley 

1 MS. Life of Wilson, quoted by Hutchinson, Hist, of Mass. Bay, 
i. 62. 



1 637.] THE BOY GOVERNOR. 59 

Deputy Governor, while Vane and his friends were 
left out in the cold. " There was great danger of a 
tumult that day, for those of that side grew into fierce 
speeches, and some laid hands on others ; but seeing 
themselves too weak, they grew quiet. They expected 
a great advantage that day, because the remote towns 
were allowed to come in by proxy ; but it fell out that 
there were enough besides. . . . Boston, having de- 
ferred to choose deputies till the election was passed, 
went home that night, and the next morning they 
sent Mr. Vane, the late Governor, and Mr. Codding- 
ton, Mr. Dummer, and Mr. Hoffe for their deputies, 
but the Court, being grieved at it, found a means to 
send them home again, for that two of the freemen 
of Boston had not notice of the election. So they 
all went home, and the next morning they returned 
the same gentlemen again, upon a new choice ; and 
the Court not finding how they might reject them, 
they were admitted. . . . Upon the election of the 
new Governour, the sergeants, who had attended the 
old Governour to the Court (being all Boston men, 
where the new Governour also dwelt), laid down their 
halberds and went home ; and whereas they had been 
wont to attend the former Governour to and fro from 
the meetings on the Lord's days, they gave over now, 
so as the new Governour was fain to use his own ser- 
vants to carry two halberds before him ; whereas the 
former Governour had never less than four." 1 

The wrath of the moment was slow in cooling. 
" Mr. Vane professed himself ready to serve the cause 
of God in the meanest capacity. He was, notwith- 

1 Winthrop, i. 220". 



60 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1637. 

standing, much mortified and discovered his resent- 
ment. Although he had sat at church among the 
magistrates from his first arrival, yet he and those 
who had been left out with him placed themselves 
with the deacons, and when he was invited by the 
Governour to return to his place, he refused it." 1 
Lord Ley, son and heir of the Earl of Marlborough, 
a boy in his teens, was at this time in the colony. 
Vane being invited by Winthrop to meet Lord Ley 
at dinner at his house, he " not only refused to come, 
alleging by letter that his conscience withheld him, 
but also at the same hour he went over to Nottle's 
Island to dine with Mr. Maverick [a kind of Ishmael- 
ite in the settlement], and carried the Lord Ley with 
him." 2 

As far as young Harry Vane is concerned, no 
episode of this Antinomian controversy, which para- 
lyzed in such a perilous way the heart of New Eng- 
land at the moment when the most appalling dangers 
were gathering about her, is so memorable as his writ- 
ten controversy with the noble-minded and hearted 
John Winthrop, the father of the country ; and for this 
we must take # a separate chapter. 

1 Hutchinson, i. 63. 2 Winthrop, i. 232. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE CONTROVERSY WITH WINTHROP. 

Says Winthrop : " Another occasion of the discon- 
tent of that party was an order which the Court had 
made, to keep out all such persons as might be dan- 
gerous to the Commonwealth, by imposing a penalty 
upon all such as should retain any, &c, above three 
weeks, which should not be allowed by some of the 
magistrates; for it was very probable that they ex- 
pected many of their opinion to come out from 
England." 1 Cotton had felt so outraged at this order 
that he at one time made up his mind to remove 
out of the jurisdiction. Winthrop published a de- 
fence of the order, to which Vane straightway replied 
at length in " A Brief answer to a certain Declaration 
made of the Intent and Equity of the Order of Court, 
that none should be received to inhabit within this 
jurisdiction but such as should be allowed by some 
of the Magistrates." 2 Vane's work deserves careful 
attention as containing the first adumbration of a 
principle for which he was afterward to struggle most 
manfully upon a far larger stage, — the idea of 
toleration. 

1 Winthrop, i. 224. relative to the History of Jlfassa- 

2 A Collectio7i of Original Papers chusetts Bay, made by Hutchinson. 



62 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1637. 

Winthrop begins by defining " a commonweal or 
body politic " as " the consent of a certain company 
of people to cohabit together under one government 
for their mutual safety and welfare." To this Vane 
objects, as too unqualified : " There must be put in 
such a consent as is according to God ; a subjecting 
to such a government as is according unto Christ. 
And if you will define a corporation incorporated by 
virtue of the grant of our Sovereign, it must be such a 
consent as the grant requires and permits, and in that 
manner and form as it prescribes, or else it will be 
defective." The Commonwealth you describe, con- 
tinues Vane, " may be a company of Turkish pirates 
as well as Christian professors, unless the consent 
and government be better limited than it is in this 
definition ; for sure it is, all Pagans and Infidels, even 
the Indians here amongst us, may come within this 
compass. And is this such a body politic as ours, 
as you say ? God forbid ! Our Commonwealth, we 
fear, would be twice miserable, if Christ and King 
should be shut out so. Reasons taken from the 
nature of a Commonwealth not founded upon Christ, 
nor by his Majesty's charter, must needs fall to the 
ground." 

The main interest of the passage just quoted lies 
in the fact that its tone is so thoroughly loyal to the 
King. Vane, before many years, was to be a leader 
among the most uncompromising opponents of mo- 
narchical authority. At present he takes pains to 
emphasize his deference to royalty, in the midst of 
men disposed to deal very cavalierly with the claims 
of the sovereign, and the limitations of the charter 



1 637-] THE CONTROVERSY WITH WINTHROP. 63 

granted by him. Vane quotes Winthrop again : 
" The first reason of the equity of the order is this, 
' If we be a corporation, established by free consent, 
if the place of our habitation be our own, then no 
man hath right to come unto us without our con- 
sent' 

" Ans. We do not know how we that stand a cor- 
poration, by virtue of the King's charter, can thus 
argue, yet to avoid dispute, suppose the antecedent 
should be granted, the consequence doth not follow. 
This is all that can be inferred, that our consent 
regulated by the Word, and suitable to our patent 
ought to be required, not this vast and illimited con- 
sent here spoken of ; our consent is not our own 
when rightly limited. 1 Cor. vi. 19, 20." 

Vane continues, quoting Winthrop: 

" The third reason is thus framed : ' If we are 
to keep off whatsoever appears to tend to our ruin 
and damage, then may we lawfully refuse to receive 
such whose dispositions suit not with ours, and 
whose society we know will be hurtful unto us, and 
therefore it is lawful to take knowledge of men before 
we do receive them.' 

" Ans. This kind of reasoning is very confused 
and fallacious, for the question here is not only 
changed, but there is this further deceit of wrapping 
up many questions in one, and besides ; if it were 
put into a right form, the assumption would be false. 
The question is not, as was said before, whether 
knowledge may not be taken of men before they 
be received, nor whether magistrates may refuse such 
as suit not with their dispositions, or such whose 



64 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1637. 

society they know will be hurtful to them (though the 
second of these is not, nor cannot be proved), but 
whether persons may be rejected or admitted upon 
the illimited consent or dissent of magistrates. The 
assumption also would be false ; for men are not to 
keep off whatsoever appears to tend to their ruin, but 
what really doth so." 

Vane proceeds in Puritan fashion to show that 
there should be no exclusions, because it is quite 
possible that great benefactors may, to our short 
sight, appear to be harmful people. 

" Elijah appeared to Ahab, and no doubt to his 
counsel of state, a troubler of the commonwealth, one 
that brought three years famine, enough to ruin the 
whole state ; yet the Jewish magistrates ought not to 
have rejected him and all those of his frame and judg- 
ment because thus it appeared ; for in truth Elijah was 
the horseman of Israel and the chariots thereof. It 
appeared also to the chief priests and Pharisees that 
if our blessed Saviour were let alone, it would tend to 
their ruin (John xi. 47, 48), and therefore used means 
to keep it off by rejecting Christ and his gospel, 
and yet we hope you will not say they were bound 
to do so. Lastly, it appears to the natives here (who 
by your definition are complete commonwealths in 
themselves) that the cohabitation of the English with 
them tends to their utter ruin ; yet we believe you will 
not say they may lawfully keep us out upon that 
ground, for our cohabitation with them may tend to 
their conversion, and so to their eternal salvation, and 
then they should do most desperately and sinfully. 
Let us then do unto our brethren at least as we would 



I637-] THE CONTROVERSY WITH WINTHROP. 65 

desire to be done unto by barbarians ; which is not 
to be rejected because we suit not with the disposi- 
tion of their sachem, nor because by our coming God 
takes them away and troubles them, and so to their 
appearance we ruin them." 

Taking up Winthrop's declaration, that " profane 
persons may be less dangerous than such as are re- 
ligious, of large parts, confirmed in some erroneous 
way," Vane declares that here " you need not much 
confutation ; such shall be blessings wheresoever they 
come. . . . As for Scribes and Pharisees, we will not 
plead for them ; let them do it who walk in their 
way ; nor for such as are confirmed in any way of 
error though all such are not to be denied cohabita- ■ 
tion, but are to be pitied and reformed, Jude, 22, 23." 
Here we have a shadowing forth of the idea that tol- 
eration must be shown to those whom we think to be 
in error. Vane goes on, " Ishmael shall dwell in the 
presence of his brethren. Gen. xvi. 12." We must 
bear with those who are different from us is his evi- 
dent thought. He judges the law to be " most wicked 
and sinfull — 

" 1. Because the law doth leave these weighty mat- 
ters of the commonwealth, of receiving or rejecting 
such as come over, to the approbation of magistrates 
and suspends these things upon the judgment of 
man, whereas the judgment is God's. Deut. ix. 17. 
This is made a groundwork of gross popery. Priests 
and magistrates are to judge, but it must be accord- 
ing to the law of God. Deut. xvii. 9, 10, 11. That 
law which gives that without limitation to man, which 
is proper to God, cannot be just. 



66 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1637. 

" 2. Because here is liberty given by this law to 
expell and reject those which are most eminent Chris- 
tians, if they suit not with the disposition of the mag- 
istrates ; whereby it will come to pass, that Christ and 
his members will find worse entertainment among us 
than the Israelites and Isaac did amongst the Philis- 
tines, than Jacob amongst the Shechemites, yea, even 
than Lot among the Sodomites. These all gave 
leave to God's people to sit down amongst them, 
though they could not claim such rights as the King's 
subjects may. Now that law, the execution wherof 
may make us more cruel and tyrannical over God's 
children than Pagans, yea than Sodomites, must 
needs be most wicked and sinfull. 

" 3. This law doth cross many laws of Christ. 
Christ would have us render unto Ceasar the thino-s 
that are Ceasar's. Matt. xxii. 21. But this law will 
not give unto the King's majesty his right of planting 
some of his subjects amongst us, except they please 
them. Christ bids us not to forget to entertain 
strangers. Heb. xiii. 2. But here by this law we 
must not entertain, for any continuance of time, such 
stranger as the magistrates like not, though they be 
never so gracious." 

Hereafter, the rise of the doctrine of Toleration 
will be considered in some detail, and the position 
of Vane with regard to it estimated. Roger Wil- 
liams had already enunciated and practised it, though 
his memorable exposition of it in the " Bloudy Ten- 
ent of Persecution " appeared six years later than 
the date we have reached. Vane and Williams no 
doubt recognized one another as kindred spirits dur- 



1 637] THE CONTROVERSY WITH WINTHROP. 6j 

ing these disturbed days, while working together to 
fix the English foothold which the Pequots and the 
interior dissensions were making so uncertain. Wrote 
Roger Williams in after years, referring to this time 
and to his friend's later efforts in behalf of the Rhode 
Island charter: 1 "It was not price or money that 
could have purchased Rhode Island, but it was ob- 
tained by love — that love and favor which that hon- 
ored gentleman Sir H. Vane and myself had with 
the great sachem, Miantonimo, about the league 
which I procured between the Massachusetts English 
and the Narragansetts in the Pequot war. This I 
mention as the truly noble Sir H. Vane had been so 
good an instrument in the hand of God for procur- 
ing this island from the barbarians, as also for pro- 
curing and confirming the charter that it may be 
recorded with all thankfulness." Each, however, was 
probably quite independent of the other in coming 
out upon the free ground. The new ideas were close 
at hand ; before many years they were to find em- 
phatic expression, and an effort was to be made to 
put them in practice ; the approaching sunrise was 
already touching the higher and nobler minds as it 
slowly drew near. 

But what, meantime, of the Indian war? While 
Vane sat in the chair of the Governor, as we have 
seen, Endicott, sent to retaliate for the massacre of 
Oldham, had done more harm than good. By God's 
mercy the Narragansetts and Mohegans had been 
held in firm friendship to the English ; but through 

1 Mass. Hist. Coll. x. p. 20, note. 



68 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1637. 

the winter and spring the Pequots had raged around 
the Connecticut settlements at Hartford and at the 
river's mouth, containing not more than two hundred 
and fifty fighting-men, all told, scarifying and worse, all 
those upon whom they could lay their hands. While 
Vane presided, the General Court of Massachusetts 
Bay agreed to raise for the peril one hundred and 
forty men and six hundred pounds. Plymouth agreed 
to send forty men, while Connecticut, as the colony 
in especial danger, sent into the field nearly half of 
those capable of bearing arms; Connecticut, more- 
over, furnished as commander-in-chief Captain John 
Mason, who proceeded to show such prowess, that 
his old comrade-in-arms, Fairfax, besought him after- 
wards, during the Civil War, to come over and fight 
against the King. In the spring of 1637 he made a 
junction with twenty of the Massachusetts men un- 
der Captain Underhill, a partisan of Mrs. Hutchin- 
son, one of the queerest fish that swam in those 
troubled waters, " a sort of Friar Tuck," says Palfrey, 
" devotee, bravo, libertine, and buffoon in equal 
parts." l To his little army of scarcely more than a 
hundred Englishmen Mason added seventy Indian 
auxiliaries, frightened out of all efficiency by the 
deeds of the Pequots, and took the field at once, 
without waiting for the Plymouth men or the main 
part of the Massachusetts contingent. 

What tactics the Puritans should employ in the 
campaign was decided in a curious but characteristic 
fashion. Mason had been ordered by the Connecti- 
cut Court to attack Sassacus from the west, the fear 

1 Hist, of New Eng., i. 459. 



1637-] THE CONTROVERSY WITH WINTHROP. 69 

being great that if the Indians were allowed to get 
between the army and Hooker's settlement, the latter 
in the absence of so many of the men would be over- 
whelmed at once. Mason, however, with a soldier's 
eye, saw that the enemy were more vulnerable from 
the east, and, like McClellan in 1862, was anxious to 
strike there, even though he left his Washington un- 
covered. His officers would not bear him out in de- 
parting from his orders ; but, it being resolved to sub- 
mit the matter to divine direction, Stone, the stout 
chaplain, a figure scarcely less important in the eyes 
of the soldiers than the commander, spent the night 
in prayer, announcing in the morning as if by revela- 
tion from the Lord, that Mason's plan must be fol- 
lowed. This was in the middle of May, at the very 
time when the Massachusetts freemen, wrangling 
over the question of the reelection of Vane, were on 
the point of drawing swords upon one another on 
Cambridge Common. 

The details of Mason's campaign have no place 
here. 1 Two hours before dawn the handful of Eng- 
lishmen rushed into the Indian fort among many 
hundreds of sleeping warriors. The Hutchinsonian 
Underhill was very valiant ; as was also the com- 
mander, stout in more senses than one, who multi- 
plied deeds of valor until, says the chronicler, " Fac- 
ing about, he marched a slow pace up the lane he 
came down, perceiving himself very much out of 
breath." There were privations as well as perils. 
" We had," says Mason, " but one pint of strong- 
liquors among us in our whole march, but what the 

1 Ellis, Life of Mason, 383. 



70 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1637. 

wilderness afforded (the bottle of liquor being in my 
hand, and when it was empty, the very smelling to 
the bottle would presently recover such as fainted 
away, which happened by the extremity of the 
heat)." x Indeed, no more thorough bit of Indian 
fighting has ever been done. The Pequots were cut 
off almost to a man, — a horde of marauders who 
merit small sympathy, for they had thrust themselves 
in not long before as intruders upon the territory 
they occupied, 2 and had preyed like wolves upon 
their neighbors far and near. 

One embarrassment of New England, therefore, 
with the summer of 1637, was overcome. Under the 
brightening skies, on the 3d of August, " the Lord 
Ley and Mr. Vane went from Boston to the ship, 
riding at Long Island, to go for England. At their 
departure, those of Mr. Vane's party were gathered 
together, and did accompany him to the boat, (and 
many to the ship ;) and the men being in their arms, 
gave him divers vollies of shot and five pieces of 
ordnance, and he had five more at the Castle. But 
the Governor was not come from the Court, but had 
left order with the captain for their honorable dis- 



Though Vane has ceased to play a part, we may 
follow for a moment the course of the Antinomian 
controversy. A synod was held at the end of 
August, in which the temper on both sides was con- 
ciliatory. Cotton " stated the differences in a nar- 

1 Palfrey, i. 46S. 3 Winthrop, i. 235. 

2 Ellis's Mason, 366. 



1 637-] THE CONTROVERSY WITH WINTHROP. 7 1 

row scantling, and Mr. Shepard brought them yet 
nearer; so as, except men of good understanding, 
. . . few could see where the difference was." In 
November, however, the discord was as bad as ever. 
The General Court, "finding upon consultation that 
two so opposite parties could not contain in the 
same body without apparent hazard of ruin to the 
whole, agreed to send away some of the principal." 
The Hutchinsonians generally were put under ban. 
Wheelwright, driven to New Hampshire, became 
honorably prominent among the pioneers. Under- 
fill also, now in great fame as a vanquisher of the 
Pequots, betook himself thither. Mrs. Hutchinson 
herself was seized, tried, and banished, in the midst 
of spiritual excitement that drove weak heads to dis- 
traction. Father Wilson, called home from service 
as chaplain to help settle the strife, conveying from 
the seat of war such grewsome trophies as the scalps 
of Sassacus, of his brother, and five other Pequot 
sachems, 1 sternly ruled the hour. " A woman of 
Boston Congregation, having been in much trouble 
of mind about her spiritual estate, at length grew 
into utter desperation, and could not endure to hear 
of any comfort, &c, so as one day she took her lit- 
tle infant and threw it into a well, and then came 
into the house and said, now she was sure she should 
be damned, for she had drowned her child." 2 Even 
Cotton was in danger, but escaped by bending to the 
storm. Mrs. Hutchinson and her friends went at 
first to Rhode Island, where a part of them, from the 
site of Newport, wrote Vane of the state of things, 

1 Ellis's Mason, 396. 2 Winthrop, i. 236. 



72 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1637. 

and besought his influence in obtaining from the 
King a patent of the island. The hearts of the 
exiles yearned after the young leader, and the strong- 
souled Mrs. Hutchinson was not so self-sustained but 
that she felt powerless without him. " I find their 
longings great," wrote Roger Williams, 1 "after Mr. 
Vane, although they thinck he cannot returne this 
year ; the eyes of some are so earnestly fixt upon 
him, that Mrs. Hutchinson proposeth, if he come 
not to New, she must to Old England." It was her 
fate to be still further an outcast. At discord even 
with the exiles, she plunged into the pathless wilder- 
ness to the west, falling at last, with her family, vic- 
tims to the savages. 

What could be more terrible for New England 
than the crisis of the Antinomian controversy ! 
When a force was ordered to take the field against 
the Pequots, the Boston men, a most important part 
of the contingent, refused to go, because they sus- 
pected the chaplain to be under a " covenant of 
works." 2 While there can be no question that Anne 
Hutchinson and Vane would have been horrified at 
such libertinism as that of the Munster fanatics, plain 
symptoms of it appeared, and in high quarters. A 
passage from Winthrop concerning the redoubtable 
Underhill, reveals him as a most precious blade, who 
might easily, if indulged, have developed into a 
Kniperdoling. 3 

" Capt. Underhill (being about to remove to Mr. 

1 To John Winthrop, Ap. 1638. 2 Palfrey, i. 492. 

Mass. Hist. Coll., 4th series, vol. 3 Winthrop, i. 270, etc. 

ii. p. 227. 



1 637.] THE CONTROVERSY WITH WINTHROP. J T> 

Wheelwright) petitioned for three hundred acres of 
land promised him formerly ; by occasion whereof 
he was questioned about some speeches he had used 
in the ship lately, in his return out of England, viz., 
that he should say that we were zealous here, as 
the Scribes and Pharisees were, and as Paul was be- 
fore his conversion, &c., which he denying, they 
were proved to his face by a sober, godly woman 
whom he had seduced in the ship and drawn to his 
opinions, but she was after freed again. He told her 
how he came to his assurance ; he had lain under a 
spirit of bondage and a legal way five years, and 
could get no assurance, till at length as he was taking 
a pipe of tobacco, the Spirit set home an absolute 
promise of free grace with such assurance and joy as 
he never since doubted of his good estate, neither 
should he, though he should fall into sin. . . . He 
made a speech in the assembly, showing that, as the 
Lord was pleased to convert Paul as he was perse- 
cuting, &c, so he might manifest himself to him as 
he was taking the moderate use of the creature called 
tobacco. . . . The next Lord's day the same Capt. 
Underhill, having been privately dealt with upon 
suspicion of incontinency with a neighbor's wife, and 
not hearkening unto it, was publicly questioned and 
put under admonition. The matter was, for that the 
woman being young and beautiful, and withal of a 
jovial spirit and behaviour, he did daily frequent her 
house, and was divers times found there alone with 
her, the door being locked on the inside. He con- 
fessed it was ill, because it had an appearance of evil 
in it ; but his excuse was, that the woman was in great 



74 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1637. 

trouble of mind, and sore temptations, and that he 
resorted to her to comfort her ; and that when the 
door was found locked upon them, they were in pri- 
vate prayer together. But this practice was clearly 
condemned also by the elders, affirming that it had 
not been of good report for any of them to have done 
the like, and that they ought in such case, to have 
called in some brother or sister, and not to have 
locked the door, &c. They also declared, that once 
he had procured them to go visit her, telling them 
that she was in great trouble of mind; but when they 
came to her (taking her, it seems, upon the sudden) 
they perceived no such thing." 

No chapter of New England history is so full of per- 
plexities as that which we have been considering. The 
student of the period finds himself plunged into a per- 
fect Donnybrook fair of clashing authorities. What 
did Anne Hutchinson really teach? Mr. Upham, 
who thinks he understands her, believes her views 
" would probably meet with a hearty response from 
enlightened Christians of all denominations at the 
present day." 1 S. R. Gardiner, on the other hand, 
finds " her theology more stern and unbending than 
that of the settlers themselves." 2 What shall be said 
of the conduct of Winthrop ? 3 Mr. Brooks Adams 
sees in him only the tool of tyrant-priests, trying by 
illegal means to exclude from the colony those who 
had every right to be there, and conspicuously foiled 
by the woman champion when they come to cross 

1 Life of Vane, p. 139. 3 The Emancipation of Massa- 

2 History of England, viii. 174. chnsetts, ch. ii. 



1 63 7.] THE CONTROVERSY WITH WINTHROP. 75 

swords in court. To Palfrey, and multitudes more, 
Winthrop is the model throughout of justice, wisdom, 
and patience. Finally, what shall we think of Vane? 
Hutchinson calls him "obstinate and self-sufficient," 1 
and worse. " He craftily made use of the party 
which maintained these peculiar opinions in religion, 
to bring him into civil power and authority, and 
draw the affections of the people from those who 
were their leaders into the wilderness." 2 " Few men 
have done less good with greater reputation than this 
statesman," says Savage. 3 Hildreth accuses him of 
dissimulation, 4 and Ellis thinks " no very critical eye 
or judgment is necessary to assure or persuade us 
that the departure of Vane was hailed as an inexpres- 
sible relief." 5 Upham and Forster, on the other 
hand, his biographers, find his record always without 
imprudence or moral stain ; while Wendell Phillips 
pours out a tribute to his purity and mental gifts, as 
eloquent as it is undiscriminating: G — 

" Sir Harry Vane — in my judgment the noblest 
human being who ever walked the streets of yonder 
city — I do not forget Franklin or Sam Adams, 



1 Hist, of Mass. Bay, i. 65. no man should be qualified for the 

2 Ibid. i. 73. place of Governor until he had been 

3 I. Winthrop, i. 170, note. at least one year in the country." 

4 Hist, of U. S., i. 235. Since no such entry appears in the 

5 Life of Anne Hutchinson, records, Dr. Ellis doubts the fact, 
Sparks Am. Biog. 2d series, vol. but holds it to be certain that "the 
vi. p. 248. In Dr. Ellis's later ministers and the majority of the 
book, " The Puritan Age " (Bos- people regarded him with great 
ton: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.), the disfavor." 

historian Hubbard is cited as say- 6 From the $. b. K. address at 

ing that the General Court "had Harvard College, 1881. 
passed an order that henceforward 



76 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1637. 

Washington or Fayette, Garrison or John Brown. 
But Vane dwells an arrow's flight above them all, 
and his touch consecrated the continent to measure- 
less toleration of opinion and entire equality of rights. 
We are told we can find in Plato ' all the intellectual 
life of Europe for two thousand years.' So you can 
find in Vane the pure gold of two hundred and fifty 
years of American civilization with no particle of 
its dross. Plato would have welcomed him to the 
Academy, and Fenelon kneeled with him at the altar. 
He made Somers and' John Marshall possible ; like 
Carnot, he organized victory ; and Milton pales before 
him in the stainlessness of his record. He stands 
among English statesmen preeminently the repre- 
sentative, in practice and in theory, of serene faith in 
the safety of trusting truth wholly to her own defence. 
For other men we walk backward, and throw over 
their memories the mantle of charitv and excuse, 
saying reverently : ' Remember the temptation and 
the age.' But Vane's ermine has* no stain ; no act 
of his needs explanation or apology ; and in thought 
he stands abreast of the age — like pure intellect, 
belongs to all time. Carlyle said, in years when his 
words were worth heeding, ' Young men, close your 
Byron, and open your Goethe.' If my counsel had 
weight in these halls, I should say, ' Young men, 
close your John Winthrop and Washington, your 
Jefferson and Webster, and open Sir Harry Vane.' 
It was the generation that knew Vane who gave 
to our Alma Mater for a seal the simple pledge : 
Veritas? 
No writer has judged the matter more wisely than 



1 637] THE CONTROVERSY WITH WINTHROP. J J 

Gardiner, 1 who declares that Vane, coming to Massa- 
chusetts at a time of unexampled difficulty, found 
that Anne Hutchinson, voluble, ready, earnest, ut- 
tered doctrines which attracted strongly his mystical 
temperament. The absolute character of his intel- 
lect made him careless about expediency. He stood 
for tolerance, declaring a state had no right to sup- 
press liberty of speech and thought. But gold may 
be bought too dear. Vane stated the absolute truth, 
but perhaps then it could not be carried out. Win- 
throp knew that dissension in Massachusetts would 
be Laud's opportunity, and that a united front must 
be shown ; the Pequot dangers, too, made this im- 
perative. Many things allowable in peace are not 
allowable in time of war. Winthrop felt toward 
Vane as Cromwell did when he prayed " that the 
Lord would deliver him from Sir Harry Vane ! " 

To this judgment of Gardiner, it may be added 
that Henry Vane in Massachusetts was a magnificent 
boy, full of power and fine impulses, but not yet freed 
from childishness. It was boyish presumption for 
him at once upon arriving to set himself up as an 
arbiter of disputes, and undertake among those wary, 
peril-seasoned veterans the critical post of Governor; 
very boyish was his contempt of tact and neglect of 
expediency ; when he felt that matters under him 
were drifting toward destruction, like a boy again, he 
had a hearty fit of crying over it, and sought with a 
certain degree of subterfuge to get out from under 
his burden. When at last he was displaced, and the 
power restored to the politic Winthrop, the petulance 

1 Hist, of Eng. viii. 174, etc. 



78 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1637. 

was boyish with which he pouted and sulked until 
he set sail for home. Yet with it all how prophetic 
is this Massachusetts experience of the noble leader 
into whom he was to mature ! The superb audacity 
which feared before nothing was to become a prin- 
cipal factor in the force that was to raise the Eng- 
lish Commonwealth to a position supreme among 
nations. Even now whoever stood in his presence 
seemed in some way subdued by a sense of great- 
ness, so that the absurdities and unintelligibilities 
which, in blindness, he favored, found a dangerous 
acceptance. " If it had not been for him, these, 
like many other errors, might have prevailed a short 
time without any disturbance to the State, and as 
the absurdity of them appeared, silently subsided, 
and posterity would not have known that such a 
woman as Mrs. Hutchinson ever existed." 1 In his 
after-years he was to countenance on the one hand 
Catholic emancipation, on the other, to extend pro- 
tection to the pioneers of Unitarianism. " The honest, 
moral heathen," indeed, were not beyond the scope 
of his charity. Even thus early this fine toleration 
had from him no indistinct utterance. Speaking 
of his New England career, says a writer of that 
day, " It was of God's great mercy that it ended 
not in our destruction." Very likely. He was to 
become one of the greatest of state-builders ; he 
tried his " 'prentice-hand " on Massachusetts, the very 
energy which, when well guided, was to be so effec- 
tive, racking nearly to its downfall the jack-straw 
frame-work which the cautious Winthrop was so pain- 
fully erecting. 

1 Hutchinson, i. 65. 



I637-] THE CONTROVERSY WITH WINTHROP. 79 

Nothing is finer in these old-time strivers than the 
magnanimity with which, forgetting presently the 
bitter blow-giving, they stand by one another with 
helpful hands and affectionate speech. Roger Wil- 
liams, harshly driven out, blunts the scalping-knife 
of Sassacus threatening his persecutors. Vane too, 
forgetting his rejection, saved, a few years later, the 
freedom of the colony, a service generously rendered 
and heartily and gratefully recognized. When, in 
1644, the planters were about to lose their privileges, 
and greatly needed friends at home, " it pleased God 
to stir them up such friends, viz., Sir Henry Vane, 
who had sometime lived at Boston, and though he 
might have taken occasion against us for some dis- 
honor which he apprehended to have been unjustly 
put upon him here, yet both now and at other times 
he showed himself a true friend to New England 
and a man of noble and generous mind." 1 

A letter of Vane's to Winthrop soon after shows 
the best spirit. With Vane charity has grown, and 
he wishes it may grow in the breasts of his old an- 
tagonists. 

" Honored S r , I receaved yours by your Sonne, 
and was unwilling to let him returne without telling 
you as much, the Excersise and troubles w ch God is 
pleased to lay upon these kingdomes and the Inhab- 
itants in them, teaches us patience and forbearance 
one w th another in some measure, though there be 
difference in our opinions : w ch makes me hope that 
from the experience heere it may also be derived to 
yourselves, least whilst the Congregationall way 

1 Winthrop, ii. 248. 



80 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1637. 

amongst you is in its freedome and is backed w ,h 
power, it teach its oppugners heere to extirpate it and 
roote it out from its owne principles and practice. I 
shall need to say noe more knowing your Sonne can 
acquaint you particularly w th our affaires. S r , I am, 
Your very affectionat freind and Servaunt in 
Christ : H. Vane. 

June, the 10 
1645. 

Pray Commende mee kindely to your Wife, 
Mr. Cotton and his wife and the rest of my 
freinds wth you. 

For my hono d freind John Winthrop, Sen. Esq., 

These 
In New England." 1 

Young Harry Vane returned to England at an age 
when the youth of to-day is just passing from his years 
of training to serious work. What an experience he 
had had thus far! From his tempestuous boyhood 
at Westminster school and Oxford, he had traversed 
Europe in the depth of the Thirty Years' War, at 
the very moment when the great Gustavus was beat- 
ing Tilly to the earth ; and he was behind the scenes 
in Vienna when Ferdinand and his Jesuit advisers, 
biting back their chagrin and jealousy, were beseech- 

1 This letter betrays no sign of movements of the army of the 
agitation, but it was written in a "New Model" which were to re- 
most trying crisis. The Parlia- suit, that same week, in the hard- 
ment, of which Vane was now the won victory of Naseby. This 
leader, had received news of the interesting document, preserved in 
capture, the week before, of the the Massachusetts archives, is re- 
stronghold of Leicester by the produced here in fac-simile. 
King; and was directing those 



1637] THE CONTROVERSY WITH WINTHROP. 8 1 



Jtpnvrzj y 











82 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1637. 

ing the injured Wallenstein, sulking at Prague, to 
shield the heart of the empire from the Swedish 
spear-thrust. At home again, he had stood undazed 
in the midst of the glamour surrounding the young 
Charles I., had borne unmoved both the blandish- 
ments and the ill-temper of Laud, and been for a 
moment in the thought of haughty Strafford, even 
at the time when, leaping boldly for the position of 
a Richelieu, over an England in which popular lib- 
erty should be utterly destroyed, he read, in the 
isolation of his Irish viceroyship, the news which 
his correspondents sent him of noteworthy men 
and events. He had crossed an ocean which only 
the boldest hearts dared to face, and on the con- 
fines of the world, while wrangling daily in the 
toughest of controversies, headed the settlers against 
the subtlest and most energetic foes whom the wil- 
derness ever sent against New England. What 
wonder that he ripened early, and that now, as he 
returns to England, the astute leaders of her desti- 
nies at this hour make him at once their associate 
and admit him to their most secret counsels ! 



PART II. 

THE EVOLUTION OF REPUBLICANISM. 
1637-1648. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE OPENING OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT. 

While Vane waits through the year or two be- 
tween his return from America and the opening of 
the " Short Parliament" in 1640, which was the be- 
ginning of his public life in England, certain details 
of constitutional history must be made plain. It can 
be justly said that while Vane was thoroughly an Eng- 
lishman in his principles, he became also thoroughly 
an American. That this may be understood, the 
ancient institutions must be rapidly described which 
those white-bodied, fair-haired, blue-eyed Teutons 
from whom the English-speaking world descends 
cherished in their German home, and which have not 
become extinct, but only developed. 1 The consti- 
tution of the United States contains them in modi- 
fied form, while the course of English reform is for 

1 The brief constitutional sketch works of Stubbs, Freeman, Gneist, 
•which follows is based upon the and Hallam. 



84 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1637. 

the most part a struggle to regain them. The cause 
for which the heroes of the English Commonwealth 
died in vain was the restoration of this primitive 
freedom. 

The great leading fact in that ancient polity is that 
power was in the hands of the tribesmen. At the 
assemblies of the nation, which took place at certain 
stated times, the public business was submitted to all 
the freemen, who gave their opinion by clashing their 
arms or by shouting. No man had authority over 
them except as he was elected. Some tribes had offi- 
cers called Kings, others not, — but where a King 
existed he was no autocrat. He became King only 
through the suffrages of the multitudes; and the same 
thing can be said of the Principcs, or Hcrctogas, 
army leaders, who, each one surrounded by a com- 
pany of voluntary adherents influenced by his prow- 
ess, wielded the war power. There were, indeed, 
sharply distinguished classes : below the freemen 
were slaves, and the freemen themselves contained a 
class of nobles out from whom the King and Here- 
tos:as must be elected. With some limitations, how- 
ever, it was government of, by, and for the People. 

With the Saxon conquest of England in the sixth 
century some modification of the primitive system 
may be observed. In remote expeditions, where there 
was a call for skilful guidance on the sea and good 
generalship on land, — where, too, a certain strong 
discipline was necessary, the one-man power would 
be needed, and King and Heretoga would naturally 
rise into greater authority than when the tribes were 
at home and at peace. We find then, as the separate 



1 637.] OPENING OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT. 85 

Saxon kingdoms come to dot the shore of Britain, 
that kingship has much more importance than in the 
earlier time. The King, however, remained elective, 
and the meetings of the freemen by no means lost 
their place or power. Alfred, four hundred years 
after the Saxon settlement, corrected whatever ten- 
dency to autocracy had appeared, reinvigorating the 
popular elements which had been the glory of the 
old order. 

At length, as a land-slide superimposes upon a 
tract a great new mass that differs from it, so the 
Norman conquest heaped upon the Saxon methods 
something quite foreign and which was slow to coa- 
lesce. The Norman race is the chameleon among 
races, taking on the tongue, the character, in fact, 
of whatever stock it chanced to fasten to, in its wide 
wanderings and vigorous fightings. In the tenth 
century it fastened to the Franks — and the polity 
which it transplanted to England one hundred and 
fifty years later was that of the Franks, which gave 
now to the Norman character its entire color. In this 
polity the People' had become well-nigh obliterated. 
A company of great lords, owning some suzerain as 
chief, had, each one in turn, his own company of de- 
pendants, — these dependants in turn being lords of 
other dependants in a yet lower grade. Feudalism, 
in fact, it was which Duke William after Hastings 
laid over the folk-motes, with which in township, hun- 
dred, and shire the vanquished Saxon had heretofore 
regulated his life. 

William, however, dared do no more than super- 
impose his Feudalism. The Saxon system persisted 



86 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1637. 

underneath : for local government the freemen still 
met in their assemblies. In each little neighborhood 
the motes were primary ; for the shire, with the more 
important individuals, there came to the mote repre- 
sentatives of each township, — the reeve and four 
men. Moreover, neither William nor his successors 
dared to reign without authorization by that ancient 
Saxon form of election. 

Conquered and conqueror at last, in tongue, in 
blood, in polity, coalesce ; and at the end of the thir- 
teenth century the resultant order can be plainly 
seen. Upon the throne still sits a powerful King, 
with feudatories below him, grade upon grade. Par- 
liament, however, has come into being : there sit the 
great lords of their own right ; but besides, as each 
township sent to the shire-mote its reeve and four 
men, so now to this mote of the nation, Parliament, 
each shire sends two discreet Knights and each con- 
siderable town one or more delegated Burgesses. 
The principle of representation has become fixed in 
the high places. 

Up to this time England has had no preeminence 
in maintaining the primitive Teutonic freedom. Cas- 
tile and Arragon have derived from their Visigothic 
founders powerful popular assemblies. Frederick II, 
the Hohenstauffen, has maintained them in Italy, and 
even in France they have not become extinct. Now, 
however, all disappears. As the powers of the Ibe- 
rian peninsula combine into Spain, arbitrary rule 
stamps out liberty. A tyrant suppresses it in France. 
It vanishes from Southern Europe with the great 
race of the Hohenstauffen. Germany, dismembered, 



1637.] OPENING OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT. 8? 

is given over to a horde of brutish despots, who as 
with hoofs trample freedom to death. In England 
alone it persists, at first very doubtfully. It flickers 
like a candle-flame in a rough wind, but the hand of 
Simon de Montfort is providentially held before it. 
Edward I. still further feeds and shields it, and from 
that day to this it has been a light, unquenched, un- 
quenchable. Richard II, son of the Black Prince, 
would have ruled, if he could, by hereditary right, as 
an autocrat : the nation promptly deposed him, and 
the house of Lancaster came in as constitutional sov- 
ereigns. In their Parliaments, indeed, the Lords were 
powerful while the People were weak. The Lords 
being for the most part slain in the wars of the 
Roses, the People at the same time not yet becom- 
ing strong, the Tudor Kings succeed to great might 
— might increased by still another circumstance. 
The clergy, owing allegiance in the ancient time to 
Rome, had been in a measure independent of the 
King, and often opposed him vigorously. At the Re- 
formation, the sovereign became the over-lord of the 
Church, and Bishop and priest sank into subservience. 
About Henry VIII every thwarting influence seemed 
beaten thoroughly to the earth, and his children suc- 
ceeded to an autocracy whose limitations were of the 
slightest. But the power of the Commons was stead- 
ily growing. Elizabeth felt it, but had the tact to 
remain popular, and preserved to her death at least 
the semblance of all her father had bequeathed. In 
1603 came to the throne the foolish race of Stuart, 
with slight governing ability, with no prudence, with 
no real patriotism. They claimed at once to rule jure 



88 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1637. 

divino, recognized no right in the People to limit 
their prerogative, and felt shame, as Charles I. de- 
clared, that their cousins of France and Spain had so 
far got the start of them in setting their feet upon 
the necks of the People. 

The reign of James I. did not pass without mut- 
terings of coming storm. Out from the People, op- 
pressed religiously and politically, fled westward as 
exiles a band of the best and bravest. With them 
young Harry Vane had thought at first to cast his 
lot, with a result which we have seen. He came home 
no doubt greatly matured and sobered. When he 
reached England, in the fall of 1637, his father and 
Sir Thomas Wentworth (not yet Earl of Strafford), 
the former Comptroller of the Treasury and favored 
by the Queen, the latter Lord Deputy in Ireland, 
were the two most prominent figures, if we except 
Laud, connected with the government. They were 
not friends. Wentworth's London correspondent 
informed Wentworth of young Harry's return, as he 
had informed him of his departure. " Henry Vane, 
the Comptroller's eldest son, who hath been Gov- 
ernor in New England this last year, is come home ; 
whether he hath left his former misgrounded opin- 
ions, for which he left us, I know not." 1 Not long 
after his return Vane married Frances, daughter of 
Sir Christopher Wray, of Ashby in Lincolnshire, 
thus connecting himself with a family of conse- 
quence, members of which find mention in the story 
of the Civil War before long to occupy us. He re- 
newed also his intimacy with Pym, and became the 

1 Quoted bv Forster, Vane, 2S0. 



1 637.] OPENING OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT. 89 

friend of Hampden, remaining in the closest union 
with those men so long as they lived. Vane's pub- 
lic career in England did not begin until 1640. 

We shall have little farther to do with the Puritans 
of New England. We turn to those of the same 
way of thinking who remained at home, — who, less 
fortunate in that they were beset by a thousand hin- 
drances from which the exiles were freed, were car- 
ried prematurely into battle. They sought to estab- 
lish on the old soil what would have been in all 
substantial respects America. They failed, dying by 
thousands in the field, in dungeons, on the scaffold. 
They failed, but their ideal has ever since in their old 
home been slowly becoming the real. In 1832, Sir 
Charles Wetherell denounced the Reform Bill as the 
"same as that of Cromwell & Co. It was Pride's 
Purge over again ; the principle of the bill was Re- 
publican in its basis ; it was destructive of all old 
rights and privileges." 1 Wetherell was then the 
ablest of the Tory leaders of the Commons, and inter- 
preted with perfect correctness the signs of the times. 
The present writer heard Sir Wilfrid Lawson ex- 
claim in the House of Commons, 2 " I belong to a 
society for the abolition of the House of Lords ; " and 
the utterance, so far from being regarded as treason- 
able or revolutionary, met with loud applause. The 
disestablishment of the Church has come in Ireland, 
is about to come in Wales, and cannot be far off in 
England itself. The abolition of all privileged faiths 

1 Skottowe, Short Hist, of Parliament, p. 261. 

2 Aug. 19, 1886. 



90 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1637. 

and classes, Voluntaryism in religion, the untram- 
melled popular voice in politics — the very adjust- 
ment for which the Commonwealthsmen strove, as 
all believe, is now not far off. " For the last two 
hundred years, England has been doing little more 
than carrying out, in a slow and tentative way, the 
scheme of political and religious reform propounded 
by the Army at the close of the Civil War." 1 

Charles I. came to the throne in 1625, a man of 
twenty-five, by no means without gifts, accomplish- 
ments, and virtues. His portraits give a high, nar- 
row forehead, an oval face, ending below in a chin 
whose weakness is not concealed by the pointed 
beard. The handsome eyes have a somewhat mel. 
ancholy expression which strikes a sympathetic 
chord in a sensitive beholder. The delicate outline 
of the nose indicates refinement, not power. Well- 
built shoulders, upon which falls the long, abun- 
dant hair, surmount appropriately a figure through- 
out erect and soldierly. He was a good husband 
and father, well-read, and with fine taste in art. 
He could speak and write with ability, bore with 
perfect fortitude the hardest campaigning and the 
severest ill-fortune, and could fight bravely in battle. 
When he relied upon himself instead of trusting 
to foolish advisers, he sometimes showed ability as 
a general. His faults, however, were utterly in- 
curable, and of a kind to wreck any man. He had 
little self-reliance and no skill in selecting counsel- 
lors. The narrow Laud, the hare-brained Rupert, 

1 J. R. Green, Short Hist, of the English People, p. 548, Mac- 
millan, 1875. 



1 637-] OPENING OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT. 9 1 

most of all, the Queen, daughter of Henri IV, 
full of quick French wit and spirit, but frivolous, 
and utterly without appreciation of the sober, self- 
willed Protestants, among whom she, an ardent 
Catholic, had come to rule, — such advisers as these 
counted far more with Charles than the fine soldier 
Sir Ralph Hopton, the noble-minded Falkland, and 
the discreet Hyde. The great moral defect in 
Charles was the absolute faithlessness which made 
him completely unreliable in all things affecting his 
place and claims. This treachery of nature strangely 
coexisted in him with a sensitive conscience, his 
moral judgment having become perverted. He ap- 
peared to feel that a Prince, as to ethical obligations, 
was lifted into a sphere above that of ordinary mor- 
tals. It was right for him to make promises with a 
mental reservation, so that the engagement might be 
broken at his pleasure. In the atmosphere in which 
he had been educated " it stood fixed that between a 
King and his subjects nothing of the nature of recip- 
rocal agreement could exist, — that, even if he wished, 
he could not give away his absolute authority, — that 
in every promise and oath of the King lay the con- 
dition salvo jure regis, — that he, therefore, in case of 
necessity, might break his oath, and that the decision 
as to the existence of the necessity rested with him 
alone." x 

In the twelve years that Charles had now been 
reigning what manner of man he was had abundantly 
appeared. He had as high ideas of what it was 

1 Gneist : Geschichte und heutige Gestalt der Aemter in England, 
p. 220. 



92 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1637. 

proper for a King to be and do as Richard II, as 
Henry VIII, as his father James, and had the cour- 
age to carry them out. In his eyes his just prero- 
gative stretched so far as to cover the power of the 
purse, of the sword, of legislation, of settling religious 
faith, leaving, in fact, no room for the voice of the 
People anywhere in the public management. The 
constitutional party in Parliament, with which, from 
the first, Charles had been in difficulty, found them- 
selves obliged either to sacrifice the constitution, and 
besides that their persons and property, or to attack 
royalty itself. From the latter they were restrained 
by the oath which bound them " to hold upright the 
royal person and authority." As the struggle deep- 
ened, and they were forced to stand in opposition, 
they took refuge in the fiction that the King in 
Parliament was struggling with the King among bad 
advisers. 1 

The first bad adviser of Charles, Buckingham, was 
killed by an assassin at Portsmouth. He dissolved 
in ans:er three Parliaments in succession. He caused 
the brave and wise Sir John Eliot, the People's 
champion during his early reign, to die in prison. 
By ratifying the Petition of Right, the second 
Magna Charta of Anglo-Saxon liberty, 2 " he bound 
himself never again to raise money without the con- 
sent of the Houses, never again to imprison any 
person except in due course of law, and never again 
to subject his people to the jurisdiction of courts- 
martial." Most reluctantly did he sanction this, and 

1 Gneist, p. 221. 

2 Macaulay's Hist, of England, vol. i. p. 66 (Harper's ed.). 



1 637.] OPENING OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT. 93 

eleven years passed after the dissolution of the Par- 
liament which forced it from him, years spent in 
trying to evade it, before he summoned another. 

We must try to do justice to well-meaning men 
who at the same time were terrible mischief-makers. 
Where can be found souls more brave and honest 
than Laud and Strafford, who in those eleven years, 
from 1629 to 1640, became the right-hand men of 
Charles, and instituted that policy of Thorough 
which was to put the nation under the King's feet ! 
Laud, small in figure and in intellect, testy in tem- 
per, thoroughly honest, in his zeal running full tilt 
against obstacles whose gravity he was quite too 
short-sighted to estimate, — stopped at no means, 
even to the slitting of noses and the cutting off of 
ears, to reduce to conformity the sullen sectaries who 
hated Prelacy. Strafford, a man of far higher type, 
convinced that the People for their own good should 
submit themselves to the guidance of superior minds, 
— the King namely, acting with the help of the wise 
counsellors by whom he should surround himself, 
employed talents of the highest order to set up the 
enlightened despotism, in which he himself, with a 
high motive, might play the part of a Richelieu, — 
the polity which he believed to be so much better for 
the People than that the People should govern them- 
selves. By means of the Star-Chamber and High- 
Commission Courts, two innovations of the Tudor 
time, constituted of appointees of the King, and ad- 
ministering the vast prerogatives which the King, 
as head of both Church and State, had now come to 
claim, Laud and Strafford pushed on against pop- 



94 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1640. 

ular rights with the utmost energy. When Scotland, 
glowing and tenacious in the gritty Scotch fashion, 
laid the Covenant upon a tombstone in an Edinburgh 
churchyard, thousands of rugged hands signing it, 
while tears streamed and the sound of fierce prayer 
arose, the King and his advisers sought to force on 
Scotland the Bishops and the liturgy, not less hate- 
ful to it than the Pope or than Satan. During all 
these years great shiploads of earnest people were 
crossing the sea to settle in America, — men deter- 
mined that the King should not thrust them under. 
Yet it was soon plain that America would be no 
asylum. If the policy of Thorough prevailed at home, 
the King's arm could easily reach across the sea. 

Long- the Kins; rode rough-shod, but his course 
was at last curbed. The great warfare began, in 
which the first missile to be discharged was the 
famous stool which Jenny Geddes, in St. Giles' 
Kirk in Edinburgh, hurled at the head of the Bishop 
as he read the liturgy. Scotland was already in re- 
bellion, England on the verge of it. The opposition 
was so powerful, the need of money so great, that a 
Parliament became indispensable. The writs were 
issued. From their castles came the nobles to the 
House of Lords ; from each shire came in the old 
way the two Knights ; from each considerable town 
its Burgess, until 500 stout Englishmen sat down in 
the chapel of St. Stephen at Westminster. 

Something must be said of Pym and Hampden, 
who, now in these forming years of Vane, had great 
influence over him. In 1640, John Pym was fifty-six 
years old, and the leading commoner of England. 



1640.] OPENING OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT. '95 

He was well-born, had been at Oxford, and early 
became famous as a lawyer. From 16 14 he had 
been in Parliament, and in 1620 was a leader there 
on the popular side. He had maintained the privi- 
leges of Parliament in 162 1 against James I, and 
been imprisoned for his opposition to the Court. In 
the first Parliament of Charles I he was a leader 
against prerogative, and in the following year, 1626, 
was a manager in the impeachment of Buckingham. 
He was prominent in treating with the Scotch Cove- 
nanters, who in 1639, after Charles had tried to 
force Episcopacy upon them, made overtures to the 
Commons, looking toward mutual help ; and went 
with Hampden through the country to incite the 
people to send in petitions. He was fast advancing 
to that point of power which made his nickname, 
King Pym, so appropriate. 

John Hampden in 1640 was forty-six years old, 
one of the gentry, his mother an aunt of a Hunting- 
donshire squire at this time quite unknown, Cromwell. 
He too had had an Oxford training and had become 
a lawyer; there had been at one time thought of con- 
fiding to him the education of the Prince of Wales, 
his classical attainments were so considerable. He 
had large estates in Oxfordshire, where he lived, had 
been in Parliament as early as 162 1, and also in the 
first Parliament of Charles I, in which he made no 
figure. The hour struck for Hampden toward the 
end of the decade, when the King, having angrily 
dissolved the Parliaments of 1625 and 1627, at- 
tempted to rais,e money by a forced loan. Hampden 
took the lead in refusing to be assessed, and was fol- 



96 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1640. 

lowed by eighty more of the landed gentry, all of 
whom underwent arrest, while recusants of a lower 
class were forced into the Army or Navy. The year 
1636, however, it was which made him everywhere 
famous. It had long been customary to require a 
subsidy from the borderers to defray the expense of 
keeping out the Scots, and also to require " ship- 
money " from the maritime towns for maintaining a 
Navy in time of war. As regards these, the author- 
ization by Parliament seems not always to have been 
held necessary. At length, however, Charles de- 
manded ship-money in time of peace, and of the 
inland counties. Hampden, following his own prece- 
dent in the case of the forced loan, refused, and 
resolved to bring the matter to trial. The case came 
on in 1636, in the midst of excitement, the Court 
pursuing Hampden with the utmost animosity, while 
the country in general, feeling that no man's property 
was safe against illegal seizure, exasperated against 
the Court, adopted the intrepid protester as their 
champion and hero. Of the twelve judges of the 
Exchequer who tried the case, seven pronounced 
against Hampden : this had the effect to draw still 
more toward him the hearts of men, and in 1640 
Hampden was the most popular man in England. 

Vane is now to step forth into that career of pub- 
lic service from which, during the twenty-two years 
of life that remained to him, he was not to retire, ex- 
cept when forced to do so by the hand of tyranny. 
For the Parliament which the King was at last 
forced to summon, elections were held in March, and 



1640.] OPENING OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT. 97 

Henry Vane was returned for Kingston upon Hull. 
Immediately after, " by his father's credit with the 
Earl of Northumberland, who was Lord- High-Admi- 
ral of England, he was joined presently and jointly 
with Sir William Russell in the office of Treasurer 
of the Navy (a place of great trust and profit), which 
he equally shared with the other." 1 The Ancient 
Palace of Westminster, the principal scene hence- 
forth of Vane's labors, is swept away, with the ex- 
ception of Westminster Hall. What the House of 
Commons is now, it was outwardly, in all substantial 
respects, two hundred and fifty years ago, in the days 
of the Long Parliament. It is now rather more than 
one sixth larger, and, since 1832, elected by a con- 
siderably broader constituency. In its general ap- 
pearance and bearing, however, its ways of conduct- 
ing business, its relation to the nation, there has been 
no great change, — nor since the earliest days has 
there been any change in location. As the police- 
man of the present time scrutinizes you for dynamite 
at the entrance, you can look across the street at the 
Chapter-house of the Abbey, where from Simon de 
Montfort's days until the Tudors, Parliament was 
cradled. From the Stuart times and before, West- 
minster Hall has been the vestibule — the outer 
promenade and meeting-place, of the Commons. The 
Central Hall and corridor of the statues hold the 
site of the beautiful St. Stephen's Chapel, burned 
some fifty years since, which, after the Chapter-house, 
became the Chamber of the Commons. St. Ste- 
phen's Chapel in size and arrangement closely re- 

1 Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, i. 293, Boston ed. 1827. 



98 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1640. 



• 



sembled the present Chamber of the Commons. Old 
pictures l give at the eastern end a similar throne and 
canopy for the Speaker, behind which the great win- 
dow, just over the river, admitted an abundance of 
morning sun. Just as now stood the table with the 
mace. The members sat on the benches, in the same 
free and easy fashion. Substitute for the modern 
equivalents, the steeple-crowned hat, the broad linen 
collar with tasselled strings falling in front of the 
doublet, the knee-breeches and buckled shoes, and as 
far as the eye goes the old House would answer to 
the modern. Just so they filed out on divisions, as 
one sees them now. The opposition beset Pym with 
just such roaring and horse-play as Lord Randolph 
encounters, and Speaker Lenthall cried " Order " 
like his successor, Speaker Peel. When Hampden 
rose, the most illustrious Englishman of his day,|the 
same hush fell as always meets the words of Glad- 
stone. And now let us go back to that struggle of 
the former day, whether the People should or should 
not have a say in the government of England. 

When the Short Parliament assembled, in the 
spring of 1640, the air was full of the tumult which 
was to make the next twenty years so stormy. On 
the 1 7th of April, 2 Pym harangued the Commons for 
two hours, every sentence moderate but firm. He 
reviewed at length the political grievances, the impo- 
sitions without parliamentary grant, — tonnage and 
poundage, ship-money, coat and conduct-money, as 
the expense of clothing new raised levies was called, 

1 See the representation on the 2 S. R. Gardiner, Hist, of Eng. 
Great Seal of the Commonwealth, ix. 98, etc. 
p. 368. 



1640.] OPENING OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT. 99 

and the abuses connected with the management of 
the forests. He declared that the highway to pre- 
ferment in the Church was to preach that there was 
divine authority for an absolute power in the King to 
do what he would with the persons and goods of Eng- 
lishmen. He inveighed against the long intromission 
of Parliament. The most memorable declaration of 
the address was that the " powers of Parliament are 
to the body-politic as the rational faculties of the soul 
to a man." Charles had perhaps scarcely, like Louis 
XIV, conceived that he himself was actually the state, 
but felt himself to be at any rate the soul of the body- 
politic. As the Commons in the lobbies and aisles, 
after Pym had finished, buzzed, " A good oration ! A 
good oration ! " adopting heartily the sentiments to 
which they had listened, King and People stood in 
sharp conflict. The Peers sympathized fully with 
the temper of the Commons. They welcomed the 
notion that Parliament was the soul of the body-pol- 
itic, and in hostility to the Bishops were even more 
earnest than the Lower, House. 

When Charles asked for money, Parliament grew 
only the more sullen, declaring that, " Till the liber- 
ties of the Houses and Kingdom were cleared, they 
knew not whether they had anything to give or no." 
In the Privy Council of Charles at this moment, 
Wentworth, just before made Earl of Strafford, stood 
in especial esteem. He was honest in his belief that 
the King should be supreme, and as difficulties now 
thickened about Charles, he grew fierce in urging re- 
sistance. 1 On the 5th of May Charles summoned his 

1 Gardiner, ix. p. 117. 



IOO YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1640. 

Council at six in the morning. The elder Vane, Sec- 
retary of State, reported that there was no hope of a 
grant of money before a redress of grievances, where- 
upon Charles, hurrying to the House of Lords, dis- 
solved the Parliament, after a session of three weeks. 

The Short Parliament accomplished no act of 
legislation, but it marks an epoch. It announced 
through Pym that Parliament was the soul of the 
Commonwealth, and there were some already who 
sought the soul in the Lower House alone. " It was 
observed," says Clarendon, " that in the countenances 
of those who had most opposed all that was desired 
by his Majesty, there was a marvellous serenity ; nor 
could they conceal the joy of their hearts, for they 
knew enough of what was to come to conclude that 
the King would shortly be compelled to call another 
Parliament." 

What particular part young Henry Vane took in 
the Short Parliament is not recorded. Through 
friend and foe we know that he was already a marked 
man. His fellow-republican Ludlow writes 1 that he 
was elected to Parliament without effort on his part, 
" and in this station he soon made appear how capa- 
ble he was of managing great affairs, possessing in 
the highest perfection a quick and ready apprehen- 
sion, a strong and tenacious memory, a profound and 
penetrating judgment, a just and graceful eloquence, 
with an easy and graceful manner of speaking. To 
these were added a singular zeal and affection for the 
good of the Commonwealth, and a resolution and 
courage not to be shaken or diverted from the pub- 

1 Memoirs, p. 421, ed. 1 771, folio. 



1640.] OPENING OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT. IOI 

lie service." Already the King had dignified him 
by setting him in a responsible and lucrative office, 
and others knew him as the intimate of Pym and 
Hampden. We may suppose that the young man sat 
in his place from eight to twelve, the hours of the ses- 
sions, the comeliness which Sir Toby Matthew had 
commended passing now into the power and dignity 
of strong manhood. His thoughts possibly recurred 
to Councils at Vienna at which he had been present 
in his youth, and to the deliberations in little Puritan 
Boston, when with Winthrop, Dudley, Haynes, and 
the Magistrates he concerted schemes for foiling the 
Pequots, or fought in the war of words over Anne 
Hutchinson. How different here the place and the 
assembly, — the picked men of a populous kingdom 
gathered in a stately chamber ! Perhaps in the long 
intromission of Parliament, men had forgotten some- 
what the traditions of procedure. " Men gazed upon 
one another looking who should begin," says Claren- 
don. When Pym arose, the young man's eyes must 
have become fastened upon the features of the 
speaker, as the eastern sunlight from the great win- 
dow brought them out plainly. Pym he knew well 
as a friend, but now for the first time he felt the full 
power of the man. The eyes of Pym, too, may have 
fallen upon the marked face upturned to him, the 
soul kindling upon it before his own utterances of 
freedom, and the sight may well have afforded him 
encouragement. When Pym had ended, young 
Vane's voice was, no doubt, in the heavy murmur 
that went round the hall — "A good oration ! " 
When Parliament was dissolved, though one can 



102 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1640. 

hardly believe that young Vane's tendencies were un- 
known to the King, honors continued to fall upon 
him. Perhaps with the idea that he might still be 
won to his side, Charles knighted him in June, and 
his formal title henceforth is Sir Henry Vane of 
Raby Castle, Knight, — Raby Castle having now be- 
come the home of the family. The Royalists 1 have 
asserted that in spite of his advancement he thought 
both his father and himself ill-used at Court, and 
from now forward opposed the King with bitterness. 
Went worth, his father's enemy, stood high in favor, 
had resisted with great earnestness making his father 
Secretary of State which the Queen had recom- 
mended, and delayed the appointment for a month. 
It was, moreover, a great insult to the Vanes, which 
Charles had negligently permitted, that when Went- 
worth, the preceding January, had been raised to the 
peerage, he had chosen to have his patent made out 
not only as Earl of Strafford but as " Baron of 
Raby." 2 It is, however, utterly unreasonable to sup- 
pose that young Vane's course was influenced by 
any feeling of trifling malice. 

As unreasonable is a stigma which his enemies 
sought to attach to him, that he was lacking in phys- 
ical courage. In 1653 appeared a burlesque list of 
books, a royalist squib, called the " Bibliotheca Parlia- 
ment!." One title runs " 'Elafypog, Newburn Heath, an 
excellent Poem in Praise of one Pair of Legs, by Sir 
Henry Vane, Jr." 3 A note, added by a Royalist by 

1 Biographia Britannica, article of the Reign of Charles I, pp. 123, 
"Vane." 124. 

2 Sir Philip Warwick, Memoirs 8 Somers Tracts, vii. 92. 



1640.] OPENING OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT. 103 

way of explanation, says that Vane, though brave as 
a politician, was devoid of physical courage, and fairly 
fled at the skirmish at Newburn. Newburn skirmish 
took place August 28th of this year, not far from the 
Scottish border, the forces of the King, without food, 
discipline, or leadership, fleeing incontinently when 
encountered by the Scots. There is a bare possi- 
bility that young Vane was present. Though he was 
the friend of Pym and Hampden, neither they nor 
any one had as yet broken with the King. In 1637, 
he favored, in New England a respect for the King's 
sovereignty, and recently he had accepted knighthood 
and high preferment from Charles. If at Raby Cas- 
tle during the summer, it is quite possible he went 
northward in the Kind's train to the scene of the 
skirmish, and if he took part, ran with the rest. But 
there was no discredit, under the circumstances. As 
the story proceeds, abundant evidence will appear 
that his courage was of the best. Burnet accuses 
him of cowardice, but Burnet's editor gives a most 
curious but most incontrovertible proof of Vane's 
intrepidity. 1 

After the dissolution of Parliament, things during 
the summer rapidly went from bad to worse. Con- 
vocation, the assembled clergy, which remained in 
session, disgusted the aroused nation with a new as- 
sertion of the doctrine that Kings reigned supreme 
by divine right. It was hopeless to expect that the 
King would return to constitutional ways, and the 
feeling was general that he was tampering with 
Catholics at home and abroad. Strafford had now 

1 Burnet, Hist, of his own Times, i. p. 2S0, note. 



104 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1640. 

more influence with the King than all the rest of the 
Council put together. He had recently, in Ireland, 
been prostrated by gout and dysentery, and reached 
London in a litter; but his unconquerable will 
caused him to make light of ailments. In May, 
however, his life was despaired of. He grew a little 
better, and was visited by the King, whom, in his 
punctilious loyalty, he insisted upon receiving in 
proper attire, discarding the warm gown he had been 
wearing. A relapse carried him again to death's 
door. From his bed, nevertheless, he made his in- 
fluence felt, and as he found himself in the summer 
once more on his feet, he pressed things with energy. 
He took the lead in the high-handed compulsion that 
was to force out money from the kingdom. He 
sought for a loan of £300,000 from Spain ; he advo- 
cated a debasement of the coinage. Attempts, too, 
were made to obtain help from Genoa and France ; 
and the Queen, with Marie de Medici, her mother, 
besought the Pope for men and means, an attempt 
which the King did not thwart, if he did not connive 
at it, and the rumor of which thrilled the nation with 
disgust and terror. A levy of Danish horse was 
thought of. Worst of all, Strafford, now comman- 
der-in-chief, was authorized by his patent to bring 
the Irish army into England. At length Edinburgh 
Castle was lost, and it became indispensable to make 
some arrangement with the Scots. By a treaty with 
them at Ripon, they were promised £850 a day, and 
the King in his distress gave notice to a Great Coun- 
cil of his Peers, convened at York in September, 
that before the autumn ended a new Parliament 



1640.] OPENING OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT. 105 

should assemble. On November 3 met the Long 
Parliament, the greatest in history, and in it young 
Vane sat once more for Kingston upon Hull. 

We know to some extent, through the invaluable 
diary of Sir Symonds d'Ewes, 1 how the members 
arranged themselves as they gathered in the dull 
autumn weather at Westminster. Speaker Lenthall 
sat, of course, under his canopy, before the great 
eastern window, the clerk and assistant clerk in 
front, the latter John Rushworth, whose bulky folios 
garner the documents of the time. Pym sat on the 
Speaker's left, some distance down the hall ; between 
him and Lenthall were Edmund Waller, Daniel 
Holies, Henry Marten, and Oliver St. John, charac- 
ters with some of whom henceforth we shall be much 
concerned. On the opposite side, near the Speaker, 
were Edward Hyde, afterwards the famous Earl of 
Clarendon, his friend Lord Falkland, and Sir Henry 
Vane, Senior; these were close together. Not far 
off, on the same side, were Strode and Alderman 
Pennington, contenders for freedom, and the rough 
country member for Huntington, Oliver Cromwell. 
John Selden, scholar, free-thinker, mocker in a re- 
fined way both of Cavalier loyalty and Roundhead 
fanaticism, was under the gallery near the western 
end. Sir Arthur Haselrig sat in the gallery. Young 
Henry Vane, it is said, was on the south side, near 
St. John and Marten. As he rose to speak, the light 
from the great window over the river would have 
poured upon him from the right. His venerated 
friend and mentor, Pym, would have been upon his 

1 Preserved in the British Museum, in manuscript. 



106 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1640. 

left, and he must have looked full in the faces of his 
father, Cromwell, Hyde, and Falkland, on the benches 
opposite, a few feet distant, just across the table 
which held the mace. One can construct, in imagi- 
nation, a picture of the assembly, 500 in number, in 
pointed hat and belted doublet, knee-breeches and 
buckled shoe, — some, high-born men, sons and kins- 
men of Dukes and Earls ; some, London Aldermen, 
with badges of civic distinction ; some, provincial 
Burgesses and Knights-of-the-shire, — gathering under 
the rich, ecclesiastical architecture ; while the popu- 
lace of London, drawn by the unusual sight, crossing 
the fields past Whitehall, or brought by the water- 
men when the tide flowed, from Wapping, Billings- 
gate, or Blackfriars, thronged Old Palace Yard, as the 
members entered to take their seats. 

Future Cavalier as well as future Roundhead felt 
that all had gone wrong. No Parliament since the 
days of Simon de Montfort had reflected so accurately 
the people whom it represented. As yet, the King 
was mentioned only in terms of respect, Laud and 
Strafford being alone marks of execration, the coun- 
sellors through whom the gracious Sovereign was 
believed to have been misled. Pvm was the recos:- 
nized leader of the Commons. Hampden in Parlia- 
ment did little more than second him, speaking so 
seldom and so briefly that it is not easy to under- 
stand why his weight was so great. Great, however, 
it was, no man in England counting with the nation 
for so much. Pym in temper was purely conserva- 
tive, desiring to introduce nothing and overturn 
nothing, but simply to maintain constitutional prin- 



1640.] OPENING OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT. 107 

ciples in danger of overthrow. He had the civic 
temper, looking for wisdom in the result of common 
debate, rather than in one supereminent mind. 1 

The opening session of the Long Parliament was a 
long outburst of complaint. Exaggerated fears pre- 
vailed of a conspiracy, the aim of which was to lay- 
England at the feet of the Pope. Let us remove 
from the King his evil counsellors, was the cry, and 
at once Laud and Strafford were called to account, 
together with certain associates of inferior mark. 
We can touch but briefly upon the crowding events 
of this great period. We reach now, however, what 
is probably the most important trial that ever took 
place in any court of the English-speaking race ; and 
since young Sir Henry Vane first made himself 
known in it to the world in o-eneral, becoming: the 
principal instrument, in fact, through whom Straf- 
ford's head was laid low, the main facts must be Qriven 
— facts of interest to-day, in America, in Australia, 
or wherever the English tongue extends, for had 
Strafford escaped, it would be easy to show that 
English, and, therefore, American freedom, would 
have been crushed out by the high hand, as in Spain 
and France. 

1 Gardiner, ix. 224. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE TRIAL OF STRAFFORD. 

Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, was at this 
time forty-eight years old, a man of Cambridge edu- 
cation, accomplished by foreign travel, of wealth and 
distinguished birth. Since the age of twenty-one he 
had been a statesman, leading the Commons in op- 
position to the policy of James I, with oratory bril- 
liant and charged, apparently, with zeal for freedom. 
In 1626 he had been imprisoned with Hampden for 
refusing to pay illegal taxes. In 1628 he had con- 
spicuously advocated the ' Petition of Right. How 
had it come about that in 1640 he stood on such 
different ground, coupled with Laud as the main 
bulwark of tyranny, and nick-named " Black Tom 
Tyrant " ? A noble portrait of Strafford by Van- 
dyke hangs in Warwick Castle. It presents a swarthy 
but handsome face, marked by sensibilitv and energy ; 
the dark eyes, in particular, strike the beholder as 
being the outlook of a generous, impetuous soul, 
while they possess a certain pensiveness, as if a ter- 
rible fate were presaged. It is the front of a man 
endowed with power, and not at all ignoble of pur- 
pose. In fact, no great man ever meant better for 
his land or kind than Strafford, and yet English free- 



1640.] THE TRIAL OF STRAFFORD. 1 09 

dom was saved when he was brought to the block. In 
all probability, though Strafford in his earlier career 
is found at first on the side of the nation as repre- 
sented in the House of Commons, and at last against 
the nation, he thoroughly believed that not he but 
the House of Commons had changed. 1 In his idea 
the People were to have part in the government, but 
to counsel and cooperate, not to control. " Princes," 
he said, " are to be indulgent nursing fathers to their 
people. . . . Subjects, on the other side, ought with 
solicitous eyes of jealousy to watch over the preroga- 
tives of a crown. The authority of the King is a 
key-stone which closeth up the arch of order and 
government, which contains each part in due relation 
to the whole, and which once shaken and infirmed, 
all the frame falls together into a confused heap of 
foundation and battlement." He felt more and more 
as his life advanced, that in the maintenance and 
elevation of the royal authority lay the only safe 
path. He looked to Henry II, Edward I, Henry 
VIII, and Elizabeth for his precedents, — Sovereigns 
guiding a willing people, and found no mention of a 
dominant House of Commons, reducing the Sov- 
ereign to insignificancy. He had no confidence in 
the common-sense of ordinary citizens. After Straf- 
ford became privy councillor, in 1629, came a series 
of measures, no doubt to be traced to him, aiming at 
the protection of the helpless and the general benefit 
of the People. 2 So, constantly, as he grew in power, 
good flowed from his arbitrariness, for he struggled 
against wealth and position in behalf of justice. 

1 Gardiner, vii. 26. 2 Ibid. 160. 



HO YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1640. 

Believing that in a proper state there must be a 
supreme guiding mind in order that the popular 
welfare should be secured, that the King might " use, 
as the common parent of the country, what power 
God Almighty hath given him for preserving himself 
and his people, for whom he is accountable to 
Almighty God," he had utterly parted from jiis old 
associates, saying of Hampden in the ship-money 
case : " I would have him whipped into his right 
senses ; and if the rod be so used that it smart not 
I should be the more sorry." From President of the 
Council of the North, a tribunal established in the 1 
disturbed times of Henry VIII, with large powers, 
he became Lord-Deputy of Ireland, and at length 
the chief councillor of Charles, whom he tried to make 
absolute, succeeding in the effort as far as Ireland 
was concerned. His ability was wonderful, and to a 
large extent also beneficent. As an autocratic mili- 
tary governor, his hand was heavy, but it led a 
degraded population to wiser and happier ways of 
living. 

When in the autumn of 1640, Strafford, in com- 
mand of the army opposing the Scots, found that in 
spite of his advice Parliament was to meet, he tried 
to go to Ireland, but the King sent for him, assuring 
him (and in this assurance the Queen, who had been 
no friend of his, joined) " that he should not suffer in 
his person, honor, or fortune." Pym was no wiser in 
his view of Strafford than men in general. He was 
not in Pym's eyes 1 "a high-minded masterful states- 
man, erring through defect in temper and knowl- 

1 Gardiner, ix. 229. 



1640.] THE TRIAL OF STRAFFORD. I I I 

edge," but the black-browed apostate who was be- 
traying liberty through avarice and ambition. Clar- 
endon reports that Pym said to him while walking 
in Westminster Hall at the opening of Parliament, 
" that they must now be of another temper than they 
were the last Parliament ; that they must not only 
sweep the House clean below, but must pull down 
all the cobwebs which hung in the top and corners." 
When the assembly, therefore, " of sad and melan- 
cholic appearance," debated in St. Stephen's Chapel 
their grievances, Pym denounced Strafford at once 
as " the fountain whence these waters of bitterness 
flowed." Others followed in the same strain. Not 
a voice was raised against bringing him straightway 
to judgment, except that of Falkland, by no means 
his friend, who only counselled against haste. Pym 
said that promptness was indispensable*, and he was 
well advised. 

As the Parliament leaders misjudged Strafford, so 
Strafford misjudged them, believing them misguided 
and seditious. He had reached London, November 
9, and urged Charles to accuse the Parliament lead- 
ers at once of treason, as abetting the invasion of the 
Scots. The nth was fixed upon as the day. The 
Earl was in his place, but for some reason, most 
likely because the King faltered, 1 he did not make 
the charge when it might have been done, and mean- 
time his enemies pressed on. The doors of the 
House of Commons were locked that none might 
interrupt, and soon Pym, unanimously deputed to 
carry up the impeachment to the House of Lords, 

1 Gardiner, ix. 233. 



112 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1640. 

walked toward their Hall, attended by most of the 
members. About 3 in the afternoon, Strafford, 
whose feeble condition kept him from being prompt, 
entered the House of Lords, to find them debating 
the unusual demand of the Commons, that he, who 
had thought to impeach their leaders, should be 
himself immediately imprisoned, pending a definite 
charge. He strode haughtily toward his seat, but 
his fellow-Peers, who were as bitter toward him as 
the Commons, shouted, " Withdraw ! " He complied, 
and was at once " sequestered " from his place and 
committed to Maxwell, the usher of the Black Rod, 
who took away his sword and brought him in as a 
prisoner. He was forced to hear the decision upon 
his knees from the Lord Keeper sitting upon the 
wool-sack. As he was led away in custody, the 
crowd outside were equally pitiless, " no man cap- 
ping to him, before whom that morning the greatest 
in England would have stood discovered." 

It was an act of self-preservation. The belief was 
general, entertained by Pym as well as by the mass, 
in a terrible plot to lay England at the feet of the 
Pope. Most of the English Catholics, to be sure, 
were terrified on their side, and really wished nothing 
so much as to be let alone. There were, however, 
Catholic intriguers ; and the foolish and spirited 
Queen and her mother were constantly planning with 
priests who were tolerated at Whitehall to bring 
money and an army from the Pope, to amalgamate 
once more the churches of England and Rome, and 
to carry England back into the ancient spiritual 
bondage. It being resolved to remove Catholics 



1640.] THE TRIAL OF STRAFFORD. 113 

from the neighborhood of Westminster, a justice of 
the peace charged with carrying out the order was 
stabbed in Westminster Hall itself. The wound was 
slight, and the assailant probably crazy, but the panic 
was great, and Alderman Pennington, a London 
deputy, offered Parliament a guard of citizens. 

Pym's committee were diligent in collecting evi- 
dence and formulating charges against Strafford, so 
that on November 25 Strafford in due form was 
sent to the Tower as having tried to overturn the 
constitution and introduce arbitrary government by 
force of arms. " As to myself," wrote the victim to 
his wife, " albeit all be done against me that art and 
malice can devise, yet I am in great inward quietness, 
and a strong belief God will deliver me out of all 
these troubles. ... If there be any honor and justice 
left, my life will not be in danger. . . . Therefore 
hold up your heart, look to the children and your 
house, let me have your prayers, and at last, by Gods 
good pleasure, we shall have our deliverance, when 
we may as little look for it as we did for this blow of 
misfortune which I trust will make us better to God 
and man." x 

Meantime the course of events constantly widened 
the gulf between the King and Parliament. Mainly 
through the vehement urgency of Falkland, sup- 
ported by Hyde, men whom the drift of things was 
to carry before long to the side of Charles, ship- 
money was declared illegal, and the judges con- 
demned who had on their part condemned Hampden. 
Laud at length was declared the " root and ground 

1 Gardiner, ix. 241. 



114 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1640. 

of all our miseries." If the " fundamental laws of 
England " meant the supremacy of Parliament, Laud 
w,as as guilty as Strafford ; he was perhaps, though 
a far weaker man, equally high-minded and honest, 
and on December 18 he followed Strafford through 
the gloomy Traitor's gate. 

On December 24, the important bill was brought 
in providing for a Parliament every year, whether 
the King issued the writs for the elections or not, 
and a day or two after a little known member made 
a speech concerning whom we have the following 
vivid account : — 

" I have no mind to give an ill character of Crom- 
well, for in his conversation toward me he was ever 
friendly ; though at the latter end of the day finding 
me ever incorrigible and having some inducements to 
suspect me a tamperer, he was sufficiently rigid. The 
first time that I ever took notice of him, was in the 
very beginning of the Parliament held in November, 
1640, when I vainly thought myself a courtly young 
gentleman ; for we courtiers valued ourselves much 
upon our good clothes. I came one morning into 
the house well-clad, and perceived a gentleman 
speaking, (whom I knew not) very ordinarily appar- 
elled, for it was a plain cloth suit, which seemed to 
have been made by an ill country tailor ; his linen 
was plain and not very clean, and I remember a 
speck or two of blood upon his little band, which 
was not much larger than his collar ; his hat was 
without a hat-band, his stature was of a good size, 
his sword stuck close to his side, his countenance 
swolen and reddish, his voice sharp and untuneable, 



1640.] THE TRIAL OF STRAFFORD. I 1 5 

and his eloquence full of fervor, for the subject- 
matter would not bear much of reason ; it being in 
behalf of a servant of Mr. Pym's who had dispersed 
libels against the Queen for her dancing, and such 
like innocent and Courtly sports ; and he aggravated 
the imprisonment of this man by the council-table 
unto that height, that would have believed the very 
government itself, had been in great danger by it. I 
sincerely profess it lessened much my reverence unto 
that great council, for he was very much hearkened 
unto." 1 

Up to this time there had been in Parliament a 
remarkable unanimity. We see Hyde and Falkland, 
the one destined to be chief counsellor of the Stuarts, 
the other a martyr in their cause, as zealous to do 
away with ship-money as the most radical. Capel, 
too, one day to be beheaded before Westminster 
Hall for faithful service of the Sovereign he now op- 
posed, was foremost in uttering the discontent of the 
Lords because Strafford was slow in answering the 
charges preferred. The unanimity was political more 
than religious, and in these seething days came the 
beginning of the quarrel that was to drive apart 
many now friends. The Londoners, among whom 
there was a strong set towards Presbyterianism, had 
petitioned that Episcopacy might be destroyed " root 
and branch," and the Root and Branch party now 
began to show signs of vigor. Petitions of similar 
purport came also from Essex and Kent. Separa- 
tists, too, a little company of whom twenty years be- 
fore had gone in the " Mayflower " to found Ply- 

1 Sir Philip Warwick, Memoirs of the Reign of Charles I, 273, etc. 



Il6 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1641. 

mouth, were active and found countenance among 
those high in rank, — three or four Peers, among 
them probably Lord Say and Sele and Lord Brooke, 1 
being present at their meeting in Deadman's Place, 
Southwark. From this party, now so insignificant, 
the powerful Independents were soon to develop. 
On February 8, the London Petition was debated, 
Pym, Hampden, Vane, St. John, and Holies regard- 
ing it with favor, — Hyde, Colepeper, and Hopton 
speaking against, as well as Digby and Falkland. 2 
Those opposing wished to limit Episcopacy, but not 
abolish it. It seemed now an affair of slight moment, 
but it was to swallow up everything else. 

While Strafford delayed and Parliament used the 
interval in legislation and discussion that constantly 
put the Houses farther from the King, there was ac- 
tivity at the Court, too, and the mystery about it, with 
the imperfect hints that transpired, kept the world 
on the brink of panic. The Queen and Queen- 
mother forever solicited the Pope for money and 
men, and all might have been obtained if Charles 
could have turned Catholic. The marriage was ar- 
ranged between Prince William of Orange and the 
Princess Mary ; and the Queen-mother declared to 
the papal legate that the Prince was to bring with 
him twenty thousand men, that Strafford was then 
to be freed and put at the head of the government, 
and that France and Ireland would not be wanting. 
The army of the North, too, that had been acting 
against the Scots, was to the nation a cause of fear. 
In the uncertainties all seemed most critical. It was 

1 Gardiner, ix. 267. 2 Ibid. 287. 



1 641.] THE TRIAL OF STRAFFORD. I I 7 

really not the thirst for vengeance, but the pitiless- 
ness of terror, 1 which drove Parliament so vehe- 
mently in the pursuit of the man in whom all the 
vague danger centred. 

The story of the trial of Strafford needs not to 
be told here except in so far as it concerns young Sir 
Henry Vane. Passing into the House of Commons, 
one evening, the present writer paused in the corridor 
and looked into the great dim space of Westminster 
Hall, whose gloom seemed only the more heavy 
against the single light that struggled with its dark- 
ness. One could make out the long west side against 
which on that 2 2d of March, when Strafford was 
brought to judgment, stood the empty throne, the 
spot in front where sat the Earl of Arundel, the 
presiding officer, and the place still in front of that 
where Strafford fought for his life. The Lords in 
their robes, his judges, sat between him and Arundel. 
Close at hand to him were Pym and the other man- 
agers of the prosecution appointed by the Commons, 
his own lawyers, and to the right and left on either 
side the five hundred members of the Commons, the 
visitors who could gain admittance by money or fa- 
vor, and the Scottish Commissioners : among the lat- 
ter sat the quaint old covenanter Baillie, watching all 
with canny eye, that he might give a graphic report 
of it to his " presbytery of Irvine " as he did of many 
another great scene of those stormy times, thus mak- 
ing a record which now has the utmost value. There 
was " a close box at one end at a very convenient 

1 Gardiner, ix. 294. 



Il8 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1641. 

distance for hearing, in which the King and Queen 
sat untaken notice of." * Not quite, for the first act 
of Charles was to tear down the lattice that screened 
him in front. All saw that he was there, though, 
since the throne was vacant, he was technically ab- 
sent, and the judicial function of the Peers was not 
restrained. A man of sensibility cannot look upon 
Westminster Hall to-day without feeling his heart 
beat quick. 

The general charge was of an " endeavor to over- 
throw the fundamental government of the kingdom 
and to introduce an arbitrary power." Strafford, his 
hair streaked with gray, his figure weakened by dis- 
ease, but infused with vigor from his lion-soul, strug- 
gled powerfully against his accusers amid the rapt 
multitude. The solemn tones of Pym, thrilled with the 
conviction that the welfare of England was trembling 
in the balance, rose in opposition. Glyn and May- 
nard, subtle lawyers, whom we shall meet again at 
Westminster upon an occasion not less tragic, were 
ready here with their cunning. The elder Vane cast 
in his word toward the destruction of his enemy ; a 
few voices, but very few, were friendly to the pris- 
oner. 

At the outset a difficulty was encountered in mak- 
ing out a case of treason against Strafford. Trea- 
son, as understood through all past English history, 
had been a name given to acts against the person 
and authority of the Sovereign. Pym sought to 
broaden the signification of the word, making it any 
undermining of the laws which constitute the Sov- 

1 Clarendon, i. 330. 



1641.] THE TRIAL OF STRAFFORD. II9 

ereign's greatness. It seemed to many like an unjust 
stretching of the meaning, and Strafford's vigorous 
defence told powerfully. Women were moved, and 
many of the Peers, however they may have felt that 
the course of the Earl was wrong, began to think he 
could not properly be called a traitor. A stage of 
the trial was at length reached, when the Commons, 
incensed at the Peers for their slowness, although 
the student at the present day must feel that the 
Peers were doing their best to proceed with a proper 
judicial temper, 1 rose in fury, with loud shouts of 
" ' Withdraw ! ' got all to their feet, cocked their 
beavers in the King's sight. We all feared it should 
go to a present tumult. They went all away in con- 
fusion. Strafford slipt away to his barge and to the 
Tower, glad to be gone lest he should be torn in 
pieces. The King went home in silence ; the Lords 
to their house." 2 

The unusual step which the Commons now took 
was made possible by the violence of the partisans of. 
the King. During the weeks of their session, Par- 
liament had succeeded in coming to a good under- 
standing with the Scotch army at the North, but at 
the same time had enraged the English army, lately 
opposed to the Scots, by neglecting what the troops 
felt to be their proper requirements. A plot had 
been formed to which Charles had listened, for 
bringing the disaffected army to his assistance, a 
plot promptly betrayed to Pym by the scoundrel 
Goring, an officer of high rank, whom the reader of 
Clarendon will remember as the subject of one of his 

1 Gardiner, ix. 327. 2 Baillie, Letters and Journals, i. 289, 290. 



120 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1641. 

most finished characterizations. The Irish army was 
also at hand, — the rumors went on of Papal help 
from France and Rome, of Catholic risings at home, 
and of an army of Dutch to attend the Prince of 
Orange, who was about to appear in England as the 
bridegroom of the Princess Mary. No stone must 
be left unturned, the leaders felt ; and as the Com- 
mons sat in St. Stephen's Chapel, angry over the 
punctiliousness of the Peers, through which the 
prisoner seemed so likely to escape, it was resolved 
to use an instrument the leaders would fain have 
spared. Young Vane now comes in with important 
evidence — evidence which, says Baillie, " for young 
Sir Harry's cause, a very gracious youth, they re- 
solved to make no use in public of as testimony, 
except in case of necessity." 1 So far, the most im- 
portant evidence adduced had been that of the elder 
Vane, who declared that Strafford had said in a 
council just after the dissolution of the obstinate 
Short Parliament : 2 " Sir, you have now done your 
duty and your subjects have failed in theirs, and 
therefore you are absolved from the rules of govern- 
ment, and may supply yourself by extraordinary 
ways ; you must prosecute the war vigorously ; you 
have an army in Ireland with which you may reduce 
this Kingdom." Strafford denied the words, alleged 
the enmity toward him of Sir Henry Vane, and pro- 
tested that, at any rate, no weight ought to be attached 
to the unsupported testimony of a single witness. 
He urged, moreover, that even if it could be proved 
that he had spoken the words, no charge of treason 

1 Letters and Journals, i. 289. - Clarendon, i. 337, etc. 



1 64 1.] THE TRIAL OF STRAFFORD. 121 

could be based upon them, for the Privy Council had 
been talking of Scotland; not England. Seventeen 
days had thus passed, when at last " there was a very 
remarkable passage of which the pretence was to 
make one witness, with divers circumstances, as 
good as two." The story with which Clarendon fol- 
lows this remark is quite too picturesque to be 
omitted. 1 

" Mr. Pym informed the House of Commons, of 
the ground upon which he first advised that charge, 
and was satisfied that he should sufficiently prove it. 
That some months before the beginning of this Par- 
liament he had visited young Sir Henry Vane, eldest 
son to the Secretary, who was then newly recovered 
from an ague ; that being together and condoling the 
sad condition of the kingdom, by reason of the 
many illegal taxes and pressures, Sir Harry told him, 
if he would call upon him the next day, he would 
show him somewhat that would give him much 
trouble, and inform him what counsels were like to 
be followed to the ruin of- the kingdom ; for that he 
had, in perusal of some of his father's papers, acci- 
dentally met with the result of the Cabinet Council 
upon the dissolution of the last Parliament, which 
comprehended the resolutions then taken. The next 
day he showed him a little paper of the Secretary's 
own writing ; in which was contained the day of the 
month, and the results of several discourses made by 
several councillors ; with several hieroglyphics, which 
sufficiently expressed the persons by whom those 
discourses were made. The matter was of so tran- 

1 Clarendon, i. 342, etc. 



122 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1641. 

scendent a nature, and the counsel so prodigious, 
with reference to the Commonwealth, that he desired 
he might take a copy of it ; which the young gentle- 
man would by no means consent to, fearing it might 
prove prejudicial to his father. But when Mr. Pym 
informed him that it was of extreme consequence to 
the kingdom, and that a time might probably come 
when the discovery of this might be a sovereign 
means to preserve both Church and State, he was 
contented that Mr. Pym should take a copy of it; 
which he did in the presence of Sir Henry Vane ; 
and having examined it together, delivered the origi- 
nal again to Sir Henry. He said he had carefully 
kept this copy by him, without communicating the 
same to anybody, till the beginning of this Parlia- 
ment, which was the time he conceived fit to make 
use of it ; and that then, meeting with many other in- 
stances of the Earl's disposition to the kingdom, it 
satisfied him to move whatsoever he had moved, 
against that great person." 

Pym then read his copy : " There were written two 
LL's and a t over, and an I and an r, which," it was 
urged, " could signify nothing but lord lieutenant of 
Ireland," and the words written and applied to that 
name were, " Absolved from the rules of govern- 
ment ; — Prosecute the war vigorously ; An army in 
Ireland to subdue this Kingdom." Pym told what 
the other hieroglyphics were, interpreting them, and 
giving the fragmentary report of the speech made 
by each member^of the " Cabinet Council," adding: 
" That though there was but one witness directly in 
the point, Sir Henry Vane the Secretary, whose 



1641.] THE TRIAL OF STRAFFORD. 1 23 

hand-writing that paper was, whereof this was a copy ; 
yet he conceived those circumstances of his and young 
Sir Henry Vane's having seen those original results, 
and being ready to swear, that the paper read by him 
was a true copy of the other, might reasonably 
amount to the validity of another witness. 

" When Mr. Pym had ended, young Sir Harry 
Vane rose in some seeming disorder, confessed all 
that the other had said, and added : ' That his father 
being in the north with the King the summer before, 
had sent up his keys to his secretary, then at White- 
hall ; and had written to him (his son) that he should 
take from him those keys, which opened his boxes 
where his writings and evidences of his land were, to 
the end that he might cause an assurance to be per- 
fected which concerned his [young Sir Harry's] wife ; 
and that he having perused those evidences, and 
despatched what depended thereupon, had the curi- 
osity to desire to see what was in a red velvet 
cabinet which stood with the other boxes ; and there- 
upon required the key of that cabinet from the sec- 
retary, as if he still wanted somewhat toward the 
business his father had directed ; and so, having got- 
ten that key, he found, amongst other papers, that 
mentioned by Mr. Pym, which made that impression 
in him, that he thought himself bound in conscience 
to communicate it to some person of better judgment 
than himself, who might be more able to prevent the 
mischiefs that were threatened therein ; and so shewed 
it to Mr. Pym; and being confirmed by him, that the 
seasonable discovery thereof might do no less than 
preserve the kingdom, had consented that he should 



124 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1641. 

take a copy thereof; which, to his knowledge, he 
had faithfully done ; and thereupon had laid the 
original in its proper place again, in the red velvet 
cabinet. He said, he knew this discovery would 
prove little less than his ruin in the good opinion of 
his father ; but having been provoked by the tender- 
ness of his conscience towards the common parent, 
his country, to trespass against his natural father, he 
hoped he should find compassion from that House, 
though he had little hopes of pardon elsewhere.' 

" The son no sooner sat down, than the father (who, 
without any counterfeiting, had a natural appearance 
of sternness) rose, with a pretty confusion, and said : 
'That the ground of his misfortune was now dis- 
covered to him; that he had been much amazed, 
when he found himself pressed by such interrogato- 
ries, as made him suspect some discovery to be made 
by some person as conversant in the counsels as 
himself ; but he was now satisfied to whom he owed 
his misfortunes ; in which, he was sure, the guilty per- 
son should bear his share. That it was true, being 
in the North with the King, and that unfortunate 
son of his having married a virtuous gentlewoman, 
(daughter to a worthy member then present), to 
whom there was somewhat in justice and honor 
due, which was not sufficiently settled, he had sent 
his keys to his secretary ; not well knowing in what 
box the material writings lay; and directed him to 
suffer his son to look after those evidences which 
were necessary ; that by this occasion, it seemed 
those papers had been examined and perused, which 
had begot much of this trouble ; that for his part, 



1641.] THE TRIAL OF STRAFFORD. 125 

after the summons of this Parliament, and the King's 
return to London, he had acquainted his Majesty, 
that he had many papers remaining in his hands, of 
such transactions as were not like to be of further 
use ; and, therefore, if his Majesty pleased, he would 
burn them, lest by any accident they might come 
into hands that might make an ill use of them ; to 
which his Majesty consenting, he had burned many; 
and amongst them the original results of those de- 
bates, of which that which was read was pretended 
to be a copy; that to the particulars he could say 
nothing more, than what he had upon his examina- 
tion expressed, which was exactly true, and he would 
not deny ; though by what he had heard that after- 
noon (with which he was surprised and amazed) 
he found himself in an ill condition upon that testi- 
mony.' 

" This scene was so well acted, with such passion 
and gestures, between the father and son, that many 
speeches were made in commendation of the con- 
science, integrity, and merit of the young man, and a 
motion made ' that the father might be enjoined by 
the House to be friends with his son,' but for some 
time there was, in public, a great distance observed 
between them." 

At Strafford's trial, Hyde and the Vanes were not 
far apart. Events, however, soon brought to pass 
two parties opposed to the death, in one of which 
stood Hyde, and in the other, the father and the son. 
Hyde, as Earl of Clarendon, looking back at a later 
day upon the events of this time, viewed them 
through an atmosphere of battle-smoke, and it could 



126 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1641. 

hardly be otherwise than that his figures should 
undergo some distortion. As the extracts quoted 
show, he felt, honestly it is probable, that the Vanes, 
actuated by personal hatred, arranged the plan for 
bringing Strafford to destruction — that young Sir 
Harry played a deep part, and that the wrath of the 
father was pretended in order to cover up the base 
intrigue. The idea of the courtier historian will not 
bear examination. The elder Vane, indeed, had 
neither great ability nor elevated character. "A 
man of no clear head, but a bustling, subtle, forward 
courtier in affairs of this magnitude." * " He could 
not stand erect, could adapt himself to any hole, 
round or square, smirked, ate good things, made 
himself useful under Charles, the Commons, and the 
Protector." 2 There is no reason, however, for as- 
cribing to him such a depth of baseness as Claren- 
don's theory implies ; careful study of the facts will 
convince one that he was' neither forger nor perjurer. 
Immediately after the meeting of the Council at 
which the words were spoken, it was rumored in 
London that Strafford had recommended the em- 
ployment of the Irish army to subdue England. 
The King knew of the Secretary's notes, felt them to 
be dangerous, and ordered them to be burnt before 
the trial. In all probability Vane's testimony was 
strictly truthful, and the outburst of .wrath against 
his son a perfectly genuine manifestation. 

As to young Sir Henry Vane, since he has often 
been harshly judged for his conduct in this matter, 

1 Sir Philip Warwick : Man. of 2 Peter Bayne : Coniemp. Rev., 
Reign of Charles I, p. 153. quoted in Littell, 117, 3 2 3- 



1 64 1.] THE TRIAL OF STRAFFORD. I 27 

a careful study of the particulars is in place. Other 
contemporary accounts are somewhat more favorable 
to him than that of Clarendon. By Whitlocke 1 the 
son is represented not as pursuing unauthorized ex- 
plorations after having already found the papers for 
which his father had given him permission to search, 
but as coming quite unexpectedly upon the records 
of the secret meeting while engaged in his proper 
quest. " The son, looking over many papers, among 
them lighted upon these notes ; which being of so 
great concernment to the public, and declaring so 
much against the Earl of Strafford, he held himself 
bound in duty and conscience to discover them." 
Nalson declares, 2 " that no sooner had the son opened 
the cabinet and drawer according to his father's di- 
rections, but he found a paper with this endorsement, 
' Notes taken at the Juncto.' ' ! However it may have 
been, young Sir Henry made known his discovery to 
Pym, and Pym declared, as the extract from Claren- 
don shows, that the necessity of bringing Strafford 
to judgment first occurred to the Parliamentary 
leaders after the Secretary's notes had been thus re- 
vealed to them. Would a man of strict honor exam- 
ine in such a way the private papers of another man, 
and make known to others the secrets he discovered ? 
Pym and his friends felt that to reveal the matter 
would compromise Vane. " For young Sir Harry's 
cause," says Baillie, " a very gracious youth, they re- 
solved to make no use of it in public as testimony, 

1 Whitlocke, Memorials, i. 125, Great Affairs of State, by J. Nal- 
Oxford, 1S53. son, ii. 207. 

2 Impartial Collection of the 



128 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1641. 

except in case of necessity." Young Harry had been 
under dangerous influences. We have seen him as 
a boy at Vienna, cognizant of the unscrupulous 
Jesuitism with which Ferdinand II was trying to 
oppose the arms of Gustavus. He was always sub- 
tle, by the admission of his friends, — could pene- 
trate as no other man could " the drift of hollow 
states hard to be spelled " ; x and his enemies, as will 
be abundantly shown, were not slow to speak of his 
cunning as " cozening." In a desperate time, how- 
ever, cannot an act be justified, not admissible under 
ordinary circumstances ? 

Let us put ourselves for a moment in young Sir 
Harry's place, in those evil days. No doubt in his 
mind he was much embarrassed. He had accepted 
favors from the King — the Treasurership of the 
Navy, and the honor of Knighthood. But while on 
fair terms with the Kins;, he had at the same time 
been for years the intimate friend of Pym, and his 
sympathies had become strongly enlisted for the 
cause of the Parliament. The evil counsellors of the 
King, he felt, were bringing both Sovereign and 
nation to destruction. Finding himself in London, 
his father being still absent in the North, and being 
trusted with the keys to his father's private papers, 
the opportunity comes into his hands of discovering 
precisely what those evil counsels are, as communi- 
cated to Charles in his secret meetings with his ad- 
visers. To read the records of the Cabinet Council 
was, no doubt, an underhand proceeding, an abuse 
of confidence; but are such things never justifiable? 

1 Milton's Sonnet to Vane. 



1641.] THE TRIAL OF STRAFFORD. 1 29 

When, at a later day, the private letters of Charles 
were captured at the battle of Naseby, the knightly 
Fairfax, the General of the Parliament, refused to 
examine them because they were private. Others 
were less scrupulous ; the letters were found to con- 
tain evidence of treachery most important for patriots 
to know. Although Fairfax protested, the letters 
were made public, and had a most important influ- 
ence in strengthening the heart of the nation in the 
struggle upon which it had entered. Just before 
Naseby again, with like punctiliousness, Fairfax re- 
fused to open a letter from a Royalist commander 
to the King, which had been intercepted ; it was 
private, he thought, and though information, in all 
probability, was conveyed in it the possession of 
which might bring success to his cause, still the 
General felt that honor forbade the breaking of the 
seal. Few would say that in a time of war such scru- 
ples are not quixotic. In the summer of 1641 there 
was as yet to be sure no war, but nothing could be 
more critical than the condition of England in the 
eyes of the circle of which young Sir Henry had 
become a member. His regard for "the common 
parent, his country," he says, " had provoked him to 
trespass against his natural father." He had a good 
motive in abusing his father's confidence. Without 
doubt he believed that his father's record concerning 
Strafford made it certain that the Earl had advised 
the use of the Irish army for the subjection of Eng- 
land. The discovery " made that impression on him 
that he thought himself bound in conscience to com- 
municate it to some person of better judgment than 



130 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1641. 

himself." Pym, therefore, became his confidant, " and 
being confirmed by him that the seasonable discov- 
ery thereof might do no less than preserve the king- 
dom," he had consented to its promulgation. Straf- 
ford, indeed, was the personal enemy of his father, 
and had just before offered the Vanes what they must 
both have felt as a cutting insult, in appropriating a 
title which properly belonged to them. It is utterly 
unreasonable, however, to suppose that young Sir 
Henry was actuated by any petty malice. His char- 
acter, as indicated by his entire course, makes it 
certain that only the public considerations weighed 
with him. He felt embarrassed ; his friends tried to 
shield him, but it became necessary to make the 
whole truth known to prevent the prosecution of 
Strafford from going by the board. The Commons 
felt that young Vane had in every way acted well. 
" Many speeches were made in commendation of the 
conscience, integrity, and merit of the young man." 
The candid student to-day must believe that his con- 
duct admits of a good defence. The country was 
on the brink of ruin ; was it a time to be fastidious 
in grasping at the means to save it ? 

As to Strafford, it may be believed he was honest 
in denying the words. They came from him as he 
was speaking impetuously, and may easily have been 
forgotten, and the Parliament men attached a weight 
to them which he did not at all appreciate. Having 
been lon^ in Ireland, he did not understand English 
feeling, before which the use of an Irish army to 
overawe England was like the employment of the 
Turcos by the French in the eyes of the Germans of 



1641.] THE TRIAL OF STRAFFORD. 1 31 

1870, or the employment of the savages by the Eng- 
lish in the eyes of the Americans during our Revo- 
lution. Strafford knew the army to be well disciplined 
and obedient, and could see no objection to bringing 
it to bear in behalf of that supremacy of the King 
which he honestly felt to be for the best interest of 
the nation. 1 

Young Sir Henry Vane, then, gave his testimony 
in St. Stephen's Chapel before the House of Com- 
mons on the afternoon of the 10th of April. Though 
the Commons were sullen at what they felt to be the 
delay of the Peers, the more prudent among them, 
Pym and Hampden, with others, had no thought but 
of persisting in the impeachment. There were more 
impatient spirits, however, and soon, under the lead 
of Sir Arthur Haselrig, a bold, blundering, honest 
man, young Harry's associate in boyhood, and des- 
tined to stand in close relations with him to the very 
last, it was resolved to substitute for the impeach- 
ment a bill of attainder. This was a device of the 
preceding century, originating with Thomas Crom- 
well, to be used against men who could not be 
reached by impeachment, by which the Commons 
became as much judges as the Lords ; culprits were 
declared guilty by sentence of the legislative power, 
— by a law in parliamentary form. Though unusual, 
a bill of attainder was sanctioned by precedent and 
was just, since Parliament could make laws for every 
case. 2 When the Peers heard of it, they were indig- 

1 The matter is carefully argued bearing upon the case, ix. p. 321, 
by Gardiner, who combines a tern- also pp. 123, etc. 
per thoroughly judicial with a 2 Ranke : Hist, of Engl. ii. 249. 
minute knowledge of every fact Warwick, 173. Skottowe : Short 

Hist, of Pari. 38. 



I32 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1641. 

nant " It is unnatural," said one of them, " for the 
head to be governed by the tail. We hate rebellion 
as much as treason ; " and they went on in the im- 
peachment to hear Strafford's defence. Strafford 
himself, referring to Pym's new definition of treason, 
and claiming that he could not be blamed for having 
unconsciously sinned, said in an illustration, which to 
any one who knows the Thames will seem even now 
vivid, " If I pass down the Thames in a boat, and run 
and split myself upon an anchor, if there be not a 
buoy to give me warning, the party shall give me 
damages ; but if it be marked out, then it is at my 
own peril. . . . Were it not for the interest of those 
pledges which a saint in heaven left me" — The 
strong man stopped, broken down at the thought of 
his wife and children ; after a moment he resumed : " I 
never should take the pains to keep up this ruinous 
Cottage of mine. It is laden with such infirmities, 
that, in truth, I have no great pleasure to carry it 
about with me any longer." He finished his plea in a 
strain solemnly devout. " My Lords, my Lords, my 
Lords, something more I had to say, but my voice 
and spirit fail me. I do submit myself clearly and 
freely to your judgments, and whether that righteous 
judgment shall be life or death, te Deum laudamus, 
te Dominum confitemur." 

As April wore to a close the Lords and Commons 
remained at cross-purposes, and meantime the im- 
peachment proceeded. Once more Charles sent 
word to Strafford " upon the word and honor of a 
King, you shall not suffer in life, honor, or fortune." 
But events favored the more violent course. Thicker 



1641.] THE TRIAL OF STRAFFORD. I 33 

and thicker flew the rumors of plots. The Dutch 
were believed to be at hand — the arm of the papal 
power not less imminent. What Goring had be- 
trayed to the leaders about the descent of the north- 
ern army, became generally known. At length the 
wildest panic prevailed, for it was reported a French 
army had seized the Channel Islands, and were at 
the very shore of England. A mob beset the House 
of Lords, clamoring for justice on Strafford. The 
feeling became universal among the Peers as in the 
Commons, in favor of the more irregular but quicker 
way. " We give law," cried St. John, " to hares 
and deer, because they be beasts of chase ; it was 
never counted cruelty or foul play to knock foxes 
and wolves on the head as they can be found, be- 
cause they be beasts of prey." - One day a board 
cracked in the House of Commons, under the 
weight of two stout members. Some one cried out 
that he smelt gunpowder. The members rushed into 
the lobby, the lobby loungers into Westminster Hall, 
fearing a new Guy Fawkes plot. With shrieks of 
terror some sought the city; and the train-bands, 
arming, marched toward the danger, reaching Covent 
Garden before word came that it was a false alarm. 
In the midst of the tumult the memorable bill passed 
both Houses that Parliament should not be dis- 
solved without its own consent, and at last the bill of 
attainder, both bills being brought to the King for 
his signature on the 8th of May. 

Strafford knew that he must die, and proclaimed 
himself willing. " I do most humbly beseech your 
Majesty," he wrote Charles, " to pass this bill. . . . 



134 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1641. 

To a willing man there is no injury done. ... I 
only beg that, in your goodness, you would vouch- 
safe to cast your gracious regard upon my poor 
son and his three sisters. . . . God preserve your 
Majesty." 

As the bill of attainder for Strafford and the bill 
for perpetuating Parliament were brought to the 
King, an armed multitude followed. While Charles 
temporized, Whitehall was in a panic. The mob 
threatened each moment to attack the palace. The 
Catholic intriguers professed themselves to be stand- 
ing in fear of present death. The Queen was in im- 
minent danger of being carried to prison, with almost 
a certainty of being torn in pieces on the road. 
Scarcely a counsellor advised Charles to persist. 
The Lieutenant of the Tower declared he would ex- 
ecute the Earl whether the King agreed or not. The 
agonized Sovereign yielded at last, appointing com- 
missioners to sign both bills, so that they became 
law. Even then Charles could not give him up, but 
begged hard that the pursuers would be satisfied 
with something else than execution ; or, if not, that 
his life might be spared for a few days. But Parlia- 
ment was pitiless through terror. " Stone-dead hath 
no fellow ! " had been the stern exclamation of the 
Earl of Essex when asked to be merciful, and " Stone- 
dead hath no fellow ! " had become the general cry. 

Strafford seems to have had a glimmer of hope, 
for when the yielding of the King was announced to 
him : " Put not your trust in Princes," he cried, " nor 
in the sons of men, for in them there is no salva- 
tion." It was finished on the 12th of May. As the 



1641.] THE TRIAL OF STRAFFORD. I 35 

Earl passed the window of Laud, the old man ex- 
tended his hands through the bars to bless him, but 
fainted in the act. 

" This noble Earl was in person of a tall stature, 
something inclining to stooping in his shoulders, his 
hair black and thick, which he wore short, his coun- 
tenance of a grave well-composed symmetry and 
good features, only in his forehead he expressed 
more severity than affability, yet a very courteous 
person. And as he went from the Tower to the 
scaffold, his countenance was in a mild posture, be- 
tween dejection in contrition for sin and a high cour- 
age, without perceiving the least affirmation of dis- 
guise in him. He saluted the people as he walked 
on foot, often putting off his hat unto them, being 
apparelled in a black cloth suit, having white gloves 
on his hands. And though at this time there were 
gathered together on the great open place on Tower 
Hill, where the scaffold stood, a numerous crowd of 
people, standing as thick as they could one by an- 
other over all that great hill, insomuch as by modest 
computation they could not be esteemed less than 
one hundred thousand people, yet as he went to the 
scaffold, they uttered no reproachful or reflecting 
language upon him." 1 

The moral greatness of the man subdued even the 
rudest hearts, as he marched to the block with the 
step of a conqueror passing beneath the flower-hung 
arches of his triumph. " Thou shalt not bind mine 
eyes, for I will see it done," he said to the execu- 
tioner as he bared his neck. A silent prayer, then the 
hands were spread forth in signal, and all was over. 

1 Rushworth, Hist. Coll. viii. 772, 773. 



136 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1641. 

Long ago as it is, and champion though he was 
of un-American ideas, the eyelids still tremble as one 
reads how the Earl, his defence utterly beaten back, 
and the scaffold rising before him, refers with broken 
voice to his dead wife and innocent children. He 
could not understand the men who brought him to 
the block, nor they him. Perhaps it was fortunate 
that it was so. Had they perceived his real noble- 
ness, they could not have pressed upon him so re- 
lentlessly, and it was only relentless pressing that 
brought to pass his doom. It is well for us all that 
he died, for had he lived, and stood at the right hand 
of Charles, as he must infallibly have done, leading 
the armies, counselling and upholding the King as 
he felt inclined to palter — matchless as the Earl was 
in his time in intellect and strength of purpose, the 
freedom of the English-speaking race must have 
gone down, as freedom had before gone down among 
every people except the English, descended from 
those ancient Teutons, governing themselves in their 
assemblies in the plains of Central Europe. It is 
well that he died, although his purposes were good. 
The path he pursued conscientiously, like the path 
which many another would-be benefactor has pur- 
sued, led not to the elevation but to the debasement 
of mankind. One sharp pang and let us hope he 
stood in a light where he could see things in truer 
relations. Was young Sir Harry Vane in the crowd 
that day to see the end of the man whom he had 
done so much to bring low? There is no record, — 
but a day will come when we shall see Vane on 
Tower Hill. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

The course of events must be briefly outlined 
from the period we have reached until the actual 
outbreak of hostilities between the King and the 
Houses. While the trial of Strafford was in hand, 
the matter of tonnage and poundage (the illegal im- 
post of the nature of ship-money, which had been 
much in dispute) was settled by divesting the King 
here of all power. We have seen how the immensely 
important law that Parliament should not be dis- 
solved without its own consent, had received the 
sanction of the King in the distress of the moment 
when Strafford was condemned. Soon after came 
the abolition of the Star Chamber and High Com- 
mission Courts. The Scots, who for a year had lain 
in England, threatening the King, now received a 
good subsidy from Parliament and returned home 
well pleased. Charles yielded everything, going him- 
self in August to Scotland, and taking part in the 
grave and stately way which became him so well in 
the Presbyterian worship. When Parliament con- 
vened in October, after a recess which had begun on 
the 8th of August, its temper towards the King was 
no more conciliatory than before. Almost at once 



138 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1641. 

news came that Ireland, relieved of the pressure of 
the hand of Strafford, had burst into furious rebellion. 
A strong set toward Presbyterianism was manifest- 
ing itself in the nation, and not only were Catholics 
believed to be driving at mischief, but Anglicans, 
too, were viewed with suspicion. 

At once after the opening of the session came a 
vigorous manifesto, the Grand Remonstrance, in 
which the King's mistakes were rehearsed in more 
uncompromising terms than ever, — the unsuccess- 
ful military expeditions, the forced loans, the ille- 
gal imprisonment, the levying of taxes without con- 
sent of Parliament, and a long catalogue besides, of 
arbitrary proceedings, implying a total subversion of 
the constitution. To many this manifesto seemed 
quite too violent, and it passed the Commons by a 
majority of only eleven, in the midst of an excitement 
which seemed likely to result in a battle. The au- 
thority of Hampden calmed the storm. A spirit 
more democratic than had yet appeared became rife, 
the Commons asserting that " they themselves were 
the representative body of the whole kingdom, that 
the Peers were only individuals, and if the Lords 
were contumacious the Commons must join together 
and take care of the King." In these days came a 
definite taking of sides, and the terms Cavalier and 
Roundhead appear. Hyde, Falkland, Colepeper, and 
many another, who up to this time had opposed 
Charles, now ranged themselves, displeased at the 
violence of the majority, upon the King's side. The 
close of the year was marked by a proceeding highly 
revolutionary. In the tumults that prevailed, the 



1642.] THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR. 1 39 

Bishops, unable to make their way to Westminster 
without being insulted or indeed roughly handled, 
were absent from their places in the Lords. They 
protested against action which took place in their 
absence, whereupon the whole body of them were 
impeached and arrested as impeding legislation. 

If Charles had possessed proper prudence, he 
might now have gained great advantages. He had 
been well received in London on his return from 
Scotland, and a temperate course would have won 
him friends. Urged on by the Queen, however, who 
was made to believe that the Commons might be 
cowed by a show of vigor, Charles undertook, Janu- 
ary 3, the Impeachment of the Five Members whom 
he regarded as ringleaders of the opposition, going 
himself with an armed force to seize them. Warned 
in time, they escaped to the city, whence Skippon, 
leader of the London train-bands, escorted them back 
to their places. Charles left London, never to see it 
again except as a prisoner. Parliament, now seizing 
the power of the sword, made levies of troops, to 
which act the King gave a warlike response. On 
the side of the Cavaliers ranged themselves most of 
the nobles and gentry, the clergy, the universities, the 
Anglicans in general ; also, all who made pleasure a 
business, painters, comic poets, rope-dancers, and 
buffoons ; — these with the Catholics. 1 Opposed to 
these " Malignants " stood the nonconformists in 
general — the small freeholders, and the merchants 
and workmen in the towns. The environment of the 
King speedily became splendid. Forty Peers of the 

1 Macaulay, i. 80. 



140 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1641. 

first rank were soon in his train, whereas there were 
now seldom more than sixteen at Westminster. 
About half the Commons also disappeared, sixty 
making their way with Hyde to the northern head- 
quarters of the King at York. 

Abundant evidence exists that young Sir Henry 
Vane had made a strong impression of ability upon 
the members of the Long Parliament from the first 
Following diligently the Journal of the House of 
Commons, one finds constant mention of both father 
and son. The reports are very meagre, giving the 
merest outline of business transacted. Of the elo- 
quence which must have been poured out, the spasms 
of terror, the alternations of hope, one obtains 
scarcely an idea. As regards the present subject, 
a great difficulty arises from the fact that in the 
reports there is a careless neglect to distinguish be- 
tween father and son. " Sir Henry Vane " is con- 
stantly at work, but whether the young or the old 
Sir Henry, the searcher is for the most part left to 
his own wits to determine. 

Vane's contemporary biographer, Sikes, testifies to 
a diligence which no doubt existed from the first : — 

" During the Long Parliament, he was usually so 
engaged for the Publick, in the House, and several 
committees, from early in the morning to very late 
at night, that he had scarce any leisure to eat his 
bread, converse with his nearest Relations, or at all 
to mind his Family affairs." 

At once after Strafford's trial, the old ecclesiasti- 
cal order was swept away. On the 27th of May, a 



1641.] THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR. 141 

certain Sir Edward Dering, being in the Commons, 
introduced a bill for the abolition of Episcopacy. 1 
Dering afterwards changing his ground stated in an 
" Apology," that the bill was presented by him al- 
most without having been read, having been " pressed 
into his hand " just before by Haselrig, who in turn 
received it from young Sir Henry Vane and Mr. 
Oliver Cromwell. The measure was a most radical 
and important one, the immediate cause of the defi- 
nite taking of sides, from which war was at once to 
result. We find Vane at the bottom of it. It is an 
interesting crisis, too, in Vane's story from the fact 
that here for the first time we see him associated in 
action with Cromwell, with whom henceforth his ca- 
reer is most closely bound. The shrewd indirection, 
moreover, that marks the incident is to be noted. 
The originators themselves do not present their meas- 
ure, but pass it from hand to hand until it reaches a 
member by whom it can be laid before the House 
with a better chance of meeting success. If Dering's 
statement can be trusted, he was unwary and was 
surprised into doing something from which he would 
have shrunk. This subtle management we shall find 
to be thoroughly characteristic of Vane and his 
friends. The measure was passed, and, on June 21, 
Vane proposed the form of church government 
which should take the place of the abolished Prelacy, 
— that for the present namely, commissioners, partly 
clerical and partly lay, should be appointed for the 
purpose in each diocese. 

1 Sanford, The Great Rebellion, Old Parliamentary History, Lond. 
p. 363, etc. Gardiner, ix. 383, etc. 1753, under date. 



142 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1641. 

It is a fact of significance that whereas Pym car- 
ried up the impeachment of Strafford to the House 
of Lords, the member charged to do the same office 
for his fellow-culprit, Laud, was young Sir Henry 
Vane. February 26, " Sir H. Vane is appointed to 
go up to the Lords to desire a conference with their 
lordships by a committee of both Houses so soon 
as may stand with their lordships occasions, concern- 
ing articles to be preferred against Wm. Laud, Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, in maintenance of the common 
charge whereby he stands accused of high treason." 1 

On June 11, the House being in committee of the 
whole, with Hyde in the chair, a speech against 
Episcopal government was delivered by Sir Henry 
Vane. Nalson, 2 and also the Old Parliamentary His- 
tory, ascribe this speech to Sir Henry Vane of Wil- 
ton. This would make the father the speaker, Wil- 
ton being the borough for which he sat. The speech 
is a noble arraignment of Prelacy, and it is quite 
impossible that it should have been delivered by the 
elder Vane ; he at this time was still in full accord 
with the Court, proceeding with the King in August 
to Scotland. 3 The speech, plainly, was young Sir 
Henry's. 

Clarendon, 4 just before describing the trial of Straf- 
ford, characterizes in his skilful way the leaders of 
the Commons. After considering Pym, Hampden, 
and St. John, he speaks of young Sir Henry Vane 

1 Journal of 'House of 'Commons, 3 See letters to and from the 

also Laud's Diary, Rushvvorth, iii. elder Vane in the Nicholas Pa- 

1087. pers, Camden Society publication, 

- Impartial Collection of the 1886. 

Great Affairs of State, vol. ii. p. 4 Ibid. 291, etc. 
276 and index. 



i64i-] THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR. 143 

as being received by the three magnates into an es- 
pecial confidence. " Sir Harry Vane was a man of 
great natural parts, and of very profound dissimula- 
tion, of a quick conception, and very ready, sharp, 
and weighty expression. He had an unusual aspect, 
which, though it might naturally proceed both from 
his father and mother, neither of whom were beauti- 
ful persons, yet made men think there was something 
in him of extraordinary ; and his whole life made 
good that imagination. Within a very short time 
after he returned from his studies in Magdalen Col- 
lege at Oxford, where, though he was under the care 
of a very worthy tutor, he lived not with great exact- 
ness, he spent some little time in France and more 
in Geneva ; and after his return into England, con- 
tracted a full prejudice and bitterness against the 
Church, both against the form, of the government 
and the liturgy, which was generally in great rever- 
ence, even with many of those who were not friends 
to the other. In this giddiness, which then much dis- 
pleased, or seemed to displease, his father, who still 
appeared highly conformable, and exceedingly sharp 
against those that were not, he transported himself 
into New England, a colony within a few years be- 
fore planted by a mixture of all religions, which dis- 
posed the professors to dislike the government of the 
Church ; who were qualified by the King's charter 
to choose their own government and governors, un- 
der the obligation ' that every man should take the 
oaths of allegiance and supremacy,' which all the 
first planters did, when they received their charter, 
before they transported themselves from hence, nor 



144 YCUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1641. 

was there in many years after the least scruple 
amongst them of complying with those obligations ; 
so far men were, in the infancy of their schism, from 
refusing to take lawful oaths. He was no sooner 
landed there, but his parts made him quickly taken 
notice of, and very probably his quality, being the 
eldest son of a privy counsellor, might give him some 
advantage ; insomuch that, when the next season 
came for the election of their Magistrates, he was 
chosen their Governor ; in which place he had so 
ill-fortune (his working and unquiet fancy raising and 
infusing a thousand scruples of conscience which 
they had not brought over with them, nor heard of 
before) that he unsatisfied with them and they with 
him, he transported himself into England ; having 
sowed such seed of dissension there, as grew up too 
prosperously, and miserably divided the poor colony 
into several factions, and divisions, and persecutions 
of each other, which still continue to the great pre- 
judice of that plantation. . . . He was no sooner re- 
turned into England, than he seemed to be much re- 
formed in those extravagancies, and, with his father's 
approbation and direction, married a lady of a good 
family. . . . He became so intimate with the leaders 
that nothing was concealed from him, though it is 
believed he communicated his own thoughts to very 
few." 

Young Sir Henry Vane, to pass over less important 
incidents, was one of the committee of Parliament 
appointed to sit during the recess in the fall, and was 
active in bringing the Commons into a committee of 
the whole for a consideration of the Irish rebellion. In 



1642.] THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR. 1 45 

December, the elder Vane, having now definitely taken 
sides with Parliament, lost his high offices at Court, 1 
Falkland succeeding him as Secretary of State. 
Young Vane also lost his own position as Treasurer 
of the Navy ; upon which displacements a royalist, 
Captain George Carterett, remarks : " It seems that 
Sir Henry Vane the younger is much esteemed in 
the Commons, but I do not hear the like of his 
father, but rather that he has lost the good opinion of 
both sides." 2 Young Sir Harry was not, to be sure, 
one of the Five Members whom the King sought to 
seize, but was one of the committee of ten appointed 
at the time to retire " and consider of some way of vin- 
dicating the privileges of Parliament and for provid- 
ing for the safety of both kingdoms." 3 The diary of 
Sir Symonds d'Ewes represents him as standing now 
in the first rank in the estimation of the Housq, and 
gives an instance of the young legislator's conduct 
highly creditable to his coolness and sense of justice. 
While the Commons impetuously denounced the 
breach of their privileges suffered at the hands of the 
King, using language implying a disposition to pro- 
tect their members in any case whatever, Vane caused 
it to be added to their declaration, " That we are so 
far from any endeavor to protect any of our members 
that shall be in due manner prosecuted (according 
to the laws of the kingdom and the rights and privi- 
leges of Parliament) for treason, or any other misde- 
meanor, that none shall be more ready and willing 
than we ourselves to bring them to a speedy and due 

1 State Papers, Domestic, Dec. 2 S. P., Dom., Dec. 23, 1641. 
io, 1 641. 3 Commons youma/, Jan. 5,1642. 



146 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1642. 

trial ; being sensible that it equally imports us, as 
well to see justice done against them that are crimi- 
nal, as to defend the just rights and liberties of the 
subjects and Parliament of England." 1 

He was especially distinguished in all matters of 
religious reform ; and in debates as regards the com- 
mand of the militia, which had now become a great 
subject of dispute, he was very active and deter- 
mined. 

A picturesque incident of this time lets light in 
upon the bearing of Vane and also of the King. In 
March, 1642, Vane was member of a special com- 
mittee of twelve from both Houses, which waited 
upon the King at Theobald's, not far from London, 
when, the rupture not yet being open, the King was 
pressed to yield to Parliament the command of the 
militia. To the curt and peremptory tone of the 
commissioners, who demanded also that the King 
should reside near Westminster, and make provision 
for the proper education of the Prince of Wales, 
Charles replied, according to a royalist writer : 2 — 

" ' I am so much amazed at this message that I 
know not what to answer. You speak of jealousies and 
fears ! lay your hands to your hearts and ask your- 
selves whether I may not likewise be disturbed with 
fears and jealousies ? And if so, I assure you this 
message hath nothing lessened it. As to the militia, I 
thought so much of it before I sent that answer, and 
am so much assured that the answer is agreeable to 
what in justice or reason you can ask, or I in honor 

1 See F or ster, Arrest of the Five 2 Echard, Hist, of Eng. ii. 298, 
Members, 309, 320. 299 (London, 1707). 



1642.] THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR. 1 47 

grant, that I shall not alter it in any point. For my 
residence near you I wish it might be so safe and 
honorable that I had no cause to absent myself from 
Whitehall : ask yourselves whether I have not. For 
my son, I shall take that care of him which shall jus- 
tify me to God, as a father, and to my dominions as 
a King. To conclude, I assure you upon my honor, 
that I have no thought but of peace and justice to 
my people, which I shall by all fair means seek to 
preserve and maintain, relying upon the goodness 
and providence of God for the preservation of myself 
and my rights.' . . . The answer being suddenly 
and with unusual quickness spoken by the King, 
they were much daunted, and presently retired them- 
selves to take into consideration the terms of it, that 
there might be no difference in the reporting it 
to the several houses." The Earl of Newport, who 
was with the King, then called out his brother, the 
Earl of Warwick, a Parliament man, to tell him he 
felt sure that they would have a better answer if 
they would wait a little. To this the committee were 
inclined to assent, " when suddenly young Sir Henry 
Vane, a dark enemy to all accommodation, declared 
himself to wonder at it and said, ' Is there any per- 
son here who can undertake to know the Parliament's 
mind ; whether this which we have, or that which is 
called a more satisfactory answer, will be more pleas- 
ing to the two Houses ? For my part I cannot, and 
if there be any that can, let him speak.' " No one 
could answer this. Vane's outburst bore down his 
associates; the commissioners departed without wait- 
ing, " which shows how easily one subtle ill-disposed 



148 YOUXG SIR HENRY VANE. [1642. 

person may overthrow a general good intention." 
Vane's stiffness made the King stiff. There was an- 
other message a week later, from Parliament to 
Charles, then at Newmarket, when Charles was very 
spirited. Said Lord Pembroke for the Parliament, 
" ' Will your Majesty then deign to tell us what you 
would have? ' Chas. ' I would whip a boy in West- 
minster School that could not tell that by my an- 
swer.' ' Might not the militia be granted as desired 
by Parliament, for a time ? ' ' No, by God ! not for 
an hour ; you have asked that of me in this which 
was never asked of a King, and with which I would 
not trust my wife and children.' " 

Near the outbreak of the Civil War, the office 
which Vane had held from the King, jointly with Sir 
Wm, Russell, of Treasurer of the Navy, was restored 
to him by Parliament, but now without a colleague. 
Parliament did not make such appointments except 
in cases of necessity. The office was very lucrative 
even in peace and enormously so in war, being worth 
nearly £i°^ OQ> ° yearly. Vane gave all this up in re- 
gard for the necessities of the country, stipulating 
only for <£iooo a year for his deputy, " an agent he 
had bred up to the business." Sikes says that at 
this time he was embarrassed in his private affairs. 
Just as unselfish was he in his ambition, and Forster 
thinks * this may have been the reason why Crom- 
well, and not Vane, became the Man of the Com- 
monwealth, a judgment quite too enthusiastic to be 
adopted. 

1 Life of Vane, p. 283. 



1642.] THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR. 149 

Cavaliers and Roundheads at length stood defi- 
nitely opposed to one another, and the long word- 
wrangle deepened more and more into the thunder- 
ous, tumult of war. Both parties pressed forward the 
levying of troops, the counties obeying the summons 
of one side or the other, according* to their disposi- 
tion. The ranks of the Cavaliers held many who 
were dissolute, and their quarters for the time being 
— sometimes the courtyard of a castle, sometimes a 
protected nook by a stream under the open sky, 
sometimes the tap-rooms of a country village — rang 
with the clinking of glass and tankard and baccha- 
nalian songs. But with the revellers marched also 
many a knightly soul, prayerful after the noblest 
fashion, lamenting the errors of the King, but believ- 
ing after all he was more nearly right than his rebel- 
lious subjects, patriotically sad over the distraction 
of the land, and longing for peace. The Round- 
heads, on the other hand, received those generally 
who, refusing to conform to the established church, 
had undergone persecution until their temper had 
become that spirit, touched indeed by harsh sever- 
ity, running out into strange aberrations of fanati- 
cism, often marked by the narrowest intolerance, — 
yet in spite of all, perhaps, the most manful mani- 
festation which the world has ever seen, — Puritan- 
ism. England was about equally divided in pop- 
ulation, and also geographically, between the two 
sides. The West stood for the King ; the East, 
including the immensely important London, stood 
for Parliament ; but in each section a considerable 
minority opposed the prevailing sentiment. The 



!50 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1642. 

host of the King was far more splendid and martial 
than that of Parliament. It comprehended many 
seasoned soldiers, and many who readily became sol- 
diers, inured as they were to the semi-military train- 
ing of hunting and the chase. This advantage was 
offset by the circumstance that many partisans of the 
Kins were half-hearted. The Roundheads were 
clumsy at weapon -play and manoeuvring. Arms 
cramped to yard-sticks and plough-handles must de- 
velop a new set of muscles to wield properly pike 
and cutlass. The cuirass chafed painfully a body that 
had worn nothing rougher than a leathern doublet. 
The Roundheads, however, were generally zealous ; 
and in good time weaver, smith, and shopkeeper 
became well knit and callous to the work of battle. 

After much irregular skirmishing among neigh- 
bors, north, south, east, and west, through the sum- 
mer of 1642, the formal outbreak of the Civil War 
may be fixed upon the 23d of August, when the 
King set up his standard at Nottingham. Early 
in September, the Earl of Essex went the seventy 
miles from London to Northampton, where he found 
the twenty thousand raw Parliamentary levies, which 
he had been appointed to train and lead to battle. 
With these he marched westward toward the King, 
who now was gathering strength in the devotedly 
royalist shires toward Wales, and on the 23d of Octo- 
ber, at Edgehill, on the southern border of Warwick- 
shire, was fought the first great battle. 

Leaving London one day in August, the present 
writer followed in the track of Essex to Northamp- 
ton, to-day a prosaic shoe-town, noted for its radical- 



1642.] THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR. 151 

ism, sending to Parliament the famous Bradlaugh. 
The writer bowled on a tricycle over the hills of 
Northamptonshire, passed into Leicestershire, and 
then into Warwickshire, — now an easy bit of pedal- 
ling along a far-extending level ; now a dismount and 
tiresome push up a hill ; now a breathless rush from 
the upland down into the vale, while the air sang in 
your ears with the swiftness of the coast. It was 
lovely weather and a lovely land. The Avon, Shak- 
speare's Avon, was followed from its source through 
a series of pretty transformations. First, it ran a 
little thread from its spring in the garden of an up- 
land inn : it went looping off through the landscape 
out of sight, to appear again close by Lutterworth, 
Wickliffe's old home, as a gay ribbon, flowers purple, 
scarlet, and blue throwing in their reflections from 
the margin, until the silvery band was edged with 
brilliant color. At length, as he lay on the church- 
yard grass behind the church at Stratford, for those 
few evening moments, nearer to Shakspeare's dust 
than any other mortal, the river had become a scarf, 
and a Roman scarf at that, banded and shot through 
with the tints of sunset. Coventry was entered by a 
broad, smooth, oak-shadowed avenue. Here, too, as 
at Northampton, one finds himself on good Parlia- 
mentary ground ; for Coventry counts it among its 
honorable traditions that it kept out the King. One 
can look up at the heavy-timbered house, with pro- 
jecting upper stories and high-peaked gable, from a 
window of which, in answer to the King's Notting- 
ham demonstration, the flag of Parliament was first 
flung to the breeze. 



152 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1642. 

Southward from Stratford the writer saw lying 
before him, at length, the high outlying ridge Edge- 
hill. From a distance, one approaching can see the 
outline of a horse, the red soil showing through the 
green turf, where the spades of some unknown gen- 
eration carved out the figure on the slope, as the 
memorial of a forgotten battle. The writer doubts 
whether any soldier of King or Parliament in the old 
time, the sun roasting him within his heavy iron 
encasement, heaving at a cannon-wheel to help the 
panting horses, worked harder than that vagabond 
wheelman to get to the top of the ridge ; for the tri- 
cycle seemed to hang back by a will of its own on the 
road sloping so steeply toward the vertical. Stand- 
ing on the breezy summit, however, he was paid for 
his pains by having at his feet perhaps the finest 
prospect in the English midlands. The guide-book 
said fourteen counties could be seen. At any rate, 
blue to the west were the high Malvern Hills by 
Worcester. Nearer at hand lay the levels of Glou- 
cester. Oxfordshire was close by, and the fine roll- 
ing country of Northamptonshire and Warwickshire, 
which had just been traversed, lay east and north. 
All spread, that August noon, in perfect summer 
beauty under bright sunshine, the verdure brilliant 
through lately fallen rain, patches of forest dark on 
vivid grass, the gray of church-towers, the yellow of 
freshly built wheat stacks, a patch of red now and 
then where the soil lay bare. The acres just below 
claimed special notice, dignified as they are by asso- 
ciation with a great event : there it was that Essex 
advancing from Warwick, and Charles descending 
the steep side of Edgehill, clashed together. 



1642.] THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR. 1 53 

It was mid-afternoon of an October Sunday, as the 
Cavaliers looked down from the crest upon the Par- 
liamentary advance. First came cuirassiers. Boxed 
up as each was in his close-fitting, articulated iron 
case, with sword and lance for antennae, the nick- 
name " lobsters," which the people sometimes gave 
them, was no bad description. The troops of Den- 
zil Holies were in scarlet ; those of Lord Brooke 
wore purple ; those of Say and Mandeville blue. The 
body-guard of Essex himself were in orange, his color, 
and all the high officers wore orange scarfs. As to 
arms, the musketeers carried heavy matchlocks, fired 
laboriously from a rest ; the foot, in general, pikes 
and pole-axes which admitted of quicker movement. 
The cavalry had a far greater relative value then than 
now : the horses were powerful ; the men in close 
armor carried long-sword, carbine, pistols, and some- 
times a lance. The army of the King varied little 
in its aspect from the Roundheads, except perhaps 
in a gayer display of scarfs and pennons. Charles 
himself, like a valiant soldier as he was, rode along 
the line in steel armor, a black velvet mantle blowing 
back from his shoulders ; on this an embroidered star 
and his George (a figure of St. George hanging upon 
his breast by a rich chain) showed his rank. 

To both sides fighting was new business, but the 
field was bloody. As the writer paused for breath 
once, making his way up the hill, he fell in with a 
laborer, who pointed out, near by, an enclosure where 
once he had been set to make a ditch. As he dug, 
he broke into one of the pits in which the dead had 
been buried, and laid open with his spade enough of 



154 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1642. 

the wreck of the battle to give vivid suggestion of 
its sharpness. It was a drawn action, and with a 
glance at two or three interesting figures who played 
a part there, we must pass on to far greater and more 
decisive fields. The King's standard-bearer, Verney, 
had little heart for his master's cause. It was, how- 
ever, his hereditary office to bear the royal banner: 
this he did even while uttering pathetically his dis- 
sent : he was slain fighting among the King's red 
regiment, which was cut all to pieces. Sir Jacob 
Astley, a stout old soldier of Gustavus, was a most 
knightly figure. " Lord, thou knowest how busy I 
must be this day," he prayed. " If I forget thee, do 
not thou forget me." We shall see Sir Jacob on 
other fields besides this of Edgehill. 

In Warwick Castle, the day before the writer was 
at Eds:ehill, he saw one of the most attractive of the 
portraits of Vandyke — a handsome youth, scarcely 
more than twenty, in a corselet over a coat of buff 
leather, beautiful brown hair falling in Cavalier fash- 
ion over the broad linen collar. " As smooth as 
Hebe's is the unrazored lip " of the portrait, but the 
eye is bright with manly, martial energy. It is Prince 
Rupert, close upon the time when he was to become 
famous. At Heidelberg Castle, one may see the 
nook where he was born — a hawk's nest high above 
the Neckar — and the hawk is no inapt symbol of 
this man whose life was involved in the wildest 
storms, whose glance was like lightning, whose 
swoop toward his prey was resistless, whose heart 
was rapacious and merciless. In all the thousand 
figures that become prominent in this time of strug- 



1642.] THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR. 1 55 

gle, there is none so picturesque as this young 
prince, so haughty and cruel — so swift and beauti- 
ful. Once as a boy, with his exiled father and 
mother in Holland, he outrode the hunters, pursuing 
a fox. The train coming up saw the boots of the 
prince sticking out of a hole in the bank. Rupert 
was pulled out by his boots, and he pulled out by his 
hind-legs the hound that had run into the hole be- 
fore him ; the hound in turn pulled out the fox, into 
whose brush his teeth were fastened. Soon Rupert 
was running to earth with just as much dash far dif- 
ferent game than foxes. He was a dead-shot with 
the pistol ; proof of which, it is said, may still be seen 
at St. Mary's church in Stafford, where on a wager 
with his uncle, Charles I, he sent two bullets through 
the weather-cock on the spire. He dislocated his 
shoulder while riding hard to join the King before 
the raising of the standard, but made nothing of it, 
developing, even while crippled, into a splendid cav- 
alry leader. Caught near Worcester by Roundhead 
troopers, while, with armor laid aside, his horsemen 
were bivouacking under the trees out of the heat, he 
sprang into the saddle bareheaded and uncorseleted, 
and had the foe presently captured, a Tartar quite 
too prompt for the promptest. If to his courage and 
persistence could have been united good judgment, 
he might have been a great soldier. To a head like 
that of Wallenstein or Gustavus, what an arm he 
might have been ! But he brooked no superior save 
the King, and even the King gave way to him. In 
the landscape of his time his fame is as the flash of 
a sword-blade, the waving of a brilliantly-dyed scarf : 



156 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1642. 

it catches the eye for a moment, but is utterly unsub- 
stantial. 

It is said that as Rupert led the King's vanguard 
down Edgehill, the church-bells could be heard ring- 
ing: in the lowland. The ministers could be seen 
going from rank to rank among the Parliamentari- 
ans ; it was known that battle was near, and both in 
soul and in loins the Puritans took care to gird them- 
selves well. Rupert, as usual, in his charge scattered 
all before him, bift, as always, he went too fast and 
too far. He met at last a band of men in green com- 
ing on with the cannon, led by a hero whose name 
comes down from that time enshrined in a steady 
glory in strong contrast with the fitful flicker of Ru- 
pert's fame, John Hampden. At Edgehill his ser- 
vice was conspicuous, and the hope of the people in 
these times was more and more centring upon him 
as the battle-leader appointed by God ; but he fell 
before the troopers of Rupert at Chalgrove Field, 
before a year had passed, the most effective blow for 
his uncle that Hotspur ever struck. The success 
of the cavalry at Edgehill was cancelled elsewhere ; 
so that although Essex withdrew toward Warwick, 
the King found it prudent also to draw off toward 
Oxford. In the memoirs of the time come down pic- 
turesque and pathetic touches — how the soldiers, as 
the sweat of battle dried off, found their armor, 
chilled by the frosty night air, a cold covering, and 
tramped about to keep themselves warm ; how the 
King and Rupert, on the slope of Edgehill, watched 
out the night, toasting themselves, as less exalted 
personages might have done, by the flame of a 
brushwood fire. 



1642.] THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR. 1 57 

After Edgehill the King managed to take the ini- 
tiative soonest, and was presently threatening Lon- 
don. A battle took place in November, at Brentford 
in the suburbs, and but for a fine display of spirit by 
the Londoners under the lead of Skippon, the King 
might have ended the war then and there. On No- 
vember 7, when affairs were most threatening, a com- 
mittee of both Houses was sent to the city to ac- 
quaint it " with all the ways Parliament has used to 
procure a treaty of peace without being able to effect 
it, and to quicken them to a resolution of defending 
and maintaining their liberties and religion with their 
lives and fortune." x Of this committee young Sir 
Henry Vane was an important member, and a spokes- 
man. 

The King withdrew to Oxford to winter-quarters, 
and except that there was desultory fighting every- 
where, the war paused. A strong feeling in favor of 
peace pervaded Parliament and the nation, but there 
was no possibility of reaching terms of agreement. 
Young Vane led the opposition in the Commons to 
the disposition to come to terms before grievances 
were redressed. If Parliament began to treat with 
the King, it was urged, it would grow careless in its 
own defence. 2 But misfortunes came thick. The 
Queen, who had fled to Holland, returned with arms 
and ammunition. Landing in the midst of hostile 
cannon-fire, the daughter of Henri Quatre showed 
her intrepidity, and soon at York gathered about her 
a spirited force headed by the Duke of Newcastle. 
She was dexterous in negotiation as she was spirited 

1 Old Parliamentary History. 2 Gardiner, Great Civil War, i. 91. 



I58 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1643. 

in the field, and the peace-party in Parliament, more 
than ever active, sent commissioners to Oxford in 
March. Young Vane was on the committee to ex- 
amine and report upon these negotiations, which 
came to nothing, and immediately after was chair- 
man of a committee to stir up the zeal of the city 
and collect contributions. 1 On the 31st of May a 
dangerous plot was discovered at the head of which 
was the base time-server and graceful poet Edmund 
Waller, and on the committee of leaders appointed 
" with power to send for any persons and examine 
them, and to commit them if they see cause, and to 
seize on their papers and to meet when and where 
they please, and to do whatsoever they think good 
to prevent the danger threatened to the safety of 
the kingdom and city," — with Pym, St. John, Sir 
Gilbert Gerard, and Glyn, we find again the younger 
Vane. All was felt to be imperilled, and no trust 
could be heavier than that imposed upon these five 
men. 

As there was treachery within, so there was dis- 
aster without. There had, to be sure, been Parlia- 
mentary successes. When Charles, leaving London 
the year before, had gone to the North, at a great 
meeting upon Heyworth Moor, a vigorous young 
knight, Sir Thomas Fairfax, forcing his way to the 
side of the King, had laid upon the pommel of his 
saddle a petition little to the King's taste. Spurring 
his horse impatiently, Charles nearly overthrew the 
young knight. We shall see how large a part he 
was to play in the overthrow of the King. Already 

1 Commons Jojirnals. 



I643-] THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR. 1 59 

in 1643 Sir Thomas Fairfax with his father, Lord. 
Fairfax, had done much in the North for Parliament. 
Sir William Waller had had such success in the 
South and West as to receive the name " William the 
Conqueror." The Earl of Manchester, whom shortly 
before, as Lord Kimbolton, the King had tried to 
seize at the same time with the Five Members, was 
at the head of the eastern counties, confederated for 
Parliament. The same Colonel Cromwell, so ill- 
dressed and slovenly in the eyes of the Cavalier 
dandies of the first months of the Long Parliament, 
was already famed for several dashing exploits. As 
summer advanced, however, misfortune followed mis- 
fortune. Essex was unmistakably sluggish with 
the Parliament's main army. Waller was defeated 
at Roundway Down and elsewhere, Fairfax at Ath- 
erton Moor. Hull, at the North, for which young 
Vane sat in Parliament, was on the point of surren- 
der to Newcastle and the Queen. Bristol, the second 
city of the kingdom, did surrender to Rupert. Heavi- 
est blow of all, on the 1 8th of June, at Chalgrove 
Field, Hampden received a mortal wound. " How 
can it be otherwise ? " the hard rider Cromwell had 
said just before to his cousin Hampden, as they 
talked of defeats. 1 " Your horse are for the most 
part worn-out serving men, tapsters, and people of 
that sort ; theirs are the sons of gentlemen, men of 
quality. Do you think such poor vagabonds as your 
fellows have soul enough to stand against gentlemen 
full of resolution and honor ? Take not my words 
ill : I know you will not : you must have fellows 

1 Guizot, English Revolution, 207, New York, 1846. 



l6o YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1643. 

animated by a spirit that will take them as far as the 
King's gentlemen, or you '11 always be beaten. I can 
do something toward it and I will : I '11 raise men 
who will have the fear of God before their eyes, and 
who will bring some conscience to what they do, and 
I promise you they shall not be beaten." The King, 
flushed with success, denied to Parliament all legal 
status. But hearts were still stout in the ranks of his 
foes. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT. 

Young Sir Henry Vane was never a soldier, but 
there is reason for thinking that in the summer of 
1643 he came near leaving Westminster in order 
to try, by command of the Parliament, the fortunes 
of the field. After Hampden's death, Essex, deprived 
of his wise guidance, wrote an ill-considered letter to 
Parliament, counselling an application to the King 
for peace. He advised that "his Majesty may be 
desired to absent himself from the scene of conten- 
tion," apparently out of his tenderness for the King ; 
also, " that both armies might be drawn up near the 
one to the other, that if peace be not concluded, it 
might be ended with the sword." The proposal of 
Essex was taken ill both by the Lords and Commons, 
Vane in particular observing with bitter sarcasm, as 
we are informed by Sir Symonds d'Ewes, 1 " that since 
we had neglected, upon the several messages of the 
Lords, to entertain the consideration of sending prop- 
ositions to his Majesty, the Lord-General had done 
well to stir us up to it, although our fatherly care of 
the kingdom should have preceded his lordship's 
care. He also observed that the purport of his lord- 

1 Quoted by Sanford, Great Rebellion, p. 570, etc. 



1 62 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1643. 

ship's letter was, that if we would send propositions 
of peace to his Majesty, and they did not take effect, 
that then he would do his duty." And not till then — 
seemed to be the plain implication. Vane afterwards 
made a formal apology, but Essex, who, though slug- 
gish, was honorable and well meaning, upon receiv- 
ing word of the speech, was cut to the quick. July 
13, he wrote: " I shall advance, God willing, at far- 
thest on Friday. I have often desired that a com- 
mittee of both Houses might be sent to be a witness 
of our integrity to the service of the state. ... If 
it may stand with the convenience of the House of 
Commons, I shall entreat the favour that Sir Henry 
Vane the younger may be an eye-witness of our ac- 
tions, he being an intimate friend of mine, and who 
by his constant carriage in the Parliament, which 
hath gotten him a good reputation in all places, may 
be a true testimony of our actions, it being of huge 
advantage to keep a good correspondence betwixt the 
Parliament and their servants the army. He is be- 
sides a man I put so much trust in, as that, if he 
pleaseth, I shall go hand and hand with him to the 
walls of Oxford." 

" All men," says d'Ewes, " easily saw this letter to 
be spoken in a scoffing way ; . . . yet few did approve 
my Lord-general therein, in respect that he did strike 
at the foundation of the liberty and privilege of Par- 
liament, if men might not be suffered to speak their 
minds freely there." * 

The Earl, perhaps, scarcely intended to be taken at 
his word, but there is some evidence to show that 

1 Sanford, pp. 573, 574. 



1643] THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT. 1 63 

the Commons entertained the idea of sending Vane 
to represent them with the army. 

Says the " Mercurius Aulicus," a news sheet of 
Cavalier temper, published two or three times a week, 
many numbers of which are preserved in the Thom- 
asson Tracts : — 

"It was advertized that on the death of Mr. Hamp- 
den, whom the lower House had joined as a coadjutor 
with the Earle of Essex, or rather placed as a super- 
intendant over him, to give them an account of his 
proceedings, they had made choice of Sir Henry 
Vane the Younger to attend that service, who having: 
had a good part of his breeding under the holy minis- 
ters of New England, was thought to be provided 
of sufficient zeal, not only to inflame his excellency's 
cold affections, but to kindle a more fiery spirit of 
rebellion in his wavering souldiers." x 

The passage quoted contains a suggestion of the 
utmost interest to Americans. Vane, it was felt, 
would be a good man to fan the flagging zeal of the 
General and the troops, because he had been under 
American influences. What grounds had men in 
those days for supposing that the spirit of rebellion 
which was driving England so fiercely into conflict 
against the arbitrary King, was related to America ? 

American ideas Pym and Hampden cannot be said 
to have had, for they by no means wished to do away 
with royalty or privileged classes, or to show a gen- 
eral toleration to varying forms of faith. They de- 
sired simply to restore the proper balance to the 
ancient triple-pillared polity of King, Lords, and 

1 Forster, Life of Hampden, p. 253. 



164 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1643. 

Commons, which the Sovereigns had disturbed by 
their overweening claims of prerogative ; there had 
been no assertion, even among those who talked most 
freely, of a wish beyond this. Not Cromwell or Vane 
or any other army or Parliamentary leader had as yet 
gone farther ; but things were about to undergo a sud- 
den transformation. One hears much to-day of the 
reaction of the new world upon the nations of the old 
world. Europe, America claims, and the old world 
admits, has been wonderfully modified by influences 
which go back from us. The very earliest instance 
that can be traced of a reaction from America upon 
England, is to be assigned to the time which we have 
now reached, and a principal channel of that influ- 
ence was our young Sir Henry Vane. Now it was 
that the Independents began to rise in power, destined 
in time to supersede the Presbyterians, who since the 
beginning of the Civil War had been in vast majority 
among those opposed to the King. Independency 
was often referred to in those days as the " New 
England Way," and a brief sketch will make plain 
the appropriateness of the title. 

The first hint at Independency is perhaps to be 
found in the writings of Z winkle. 1 It first took form 
in England, however ; then developed fully in Amer- 
ica. While Prelacy was dominant in the time of 
Elizabeth and James, little congregations of Brown- 
ists, or Separatists, appeared here and there in Eng- 
land, some of which went to Holland, so magnani- 
mously hospitable in those narrow days to varying 
shades of faith. One such congregation became at 

1 Doyle, The English in America, vol. i. p. 9. 



1 643] THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT. 1 65 

last the Pilgrims of Plymouth. Winthrop and his 
band, arriving in America ten years later, though 
nominally at first adherents of the Church of Eng- 
land, were at any rate hostile to the efforts of Laud ; 
and as the struggle deepened in the effort to drive 
through the policy of " Thorough," both in the Old 
Colony and in Massachusetts Bay, a body of con- 
gregations came to exist, owning the sway of neither 
Bishop nor Synod, but each independent as regarded 
its government. To be sure, there was here small 
toleration, as we have seen. New England had a 
reputation for freedom which she did not at all de- 
serve, and which the voices of her champions fiercely 
repudiated as the worst possible stigma which could 
rest upon her fair fame. " We have been reputed," 
says the valiant Nathaniel Ward, 1 " a colluvies of 
wild opinionists, swarmed into a remote wilderness 
to find elbow-roome for our phanatick doctrines 
and practices. I trust our diligence past and con- 
stant sedulity against such persons and courses, will 
plead better things for us. I dare take upon me to 
bee the herauld of New England so farre as to pro- 
claime to the world, in the name of the Colony, that 
all Familists, Antinomians, Anabaptists, and other 
enthusiasts, shall have free liberty to keep away from 
us ; and such as will come to be gone as fast as they 
can, the sooner the better." 

New England offered to Baptists the hospitality 
of the ducking-pond, to Quakers the cart's tail and 
the scourge, to High-Churchmen a most unceremoni- 
ous shouldering out. When now in the Puritanism 

1 Simple Cobbler of Aggawam, Pulsifer's ed. p. 3, etc. 



1 66 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1643. 

opposed to Charles the sectaries began to grow pow- 
erful, who taught that each congregation should be 
independent, not only of Bishop, but also of Synod, 
and that as one of their number, a certain John Mil- 
ton, declared, " New Presbyter was but old Priest 
writ large," the New England example had much to 
do with it, and not only books, but men also crossed 
the Atlantic to foment the schism. The oreat lead- 
ers of English Independency among the ministers 
were a certain noble scholar and preacher, Dr. John 
Owen, afterwards chaplain to Cromwell and Fairfax, 
and a man of note until late in the century; Dr. 
Thomas Goodwin, a member of the Assembly of Di- 
vines; Hugh Peters, who was once more in Eng- 
land; and Philip Nye, of whom we shall presently 
know more. To these must be joined the laymen, 
Cromwell, now not at Westminster but fast growing 
famous in the army of the Parliament ; Milton, be- 
coming noted as a pamphleteer ; and young Sir 
Henry Vane. 

Says a writer who has studied the subject with 
great thoroughness : x " The polity of the strong men, 
Goodwin, Owen, Peters, Vane, Milton, Cromwell, and 
their fellows, to whom under God, was confided the 
immediate future of England, was moulded in the 
freer life and thought of New England, by their cor- 
respondents and fellow-workers, Cotton, Williams, 
and their fellows. England in her agony, looked to 
New England for counsel, got it and followed it, un- 
til she too had a Commonwealth." The proposition 

1 J. Wingate Thornton, "The wealth." Boston, 1874, pp. 33, 71. 
Historical Relation of New Eng- I am indebted to Mr. H. E. Scud- 
land to the English Common- der for my knowledge of this book. 



I643-] THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT. 1 67 

is startling enough, that the great English Common- 
wealth, with its heroic record, came out of that little 
spot in New England Boston now known as Pem- 
berton Square, but something can be said to sustain 
it. The Independents built up the Commonwealth ; 
and that the relation of this corner of the Massa- 
chusetts city to the development of Independency 
was most important can be shown in short space. 
In what is now Pemberton Square lived John Cot- 
ton, the ablest of the Massachusetts ministers, and 
young Sir Henry Vane. No one character can so 
justly be called the father of Independency as John 
Cotton. Baillie, in 1645, charges Cotton with be- 
ing " if not the author, yet the greatest promoter 
and patron of Independency, a man of very excellent 
parts, of great wit and learning, the great instrument 
of drawing to it not only the thousands of those 
who left England, but many in Old England, by his 
letters to his friends. The best of the Brownist [or 
Independent] arguments are brought in the greatest 
lustre and strength in Mr. Cotton's work, " The Way 
of the Churches." * 

The ideas of the " Way of the Churches of Christ 
in New England," and of another book by Cotton 
written about the same time, " The Doctrine of the 
Church to which is Committed the Keyes of the 
Kingdom of Heaven," both of which had a great cir- 
culation in England, are plainly shown in the follow- 
ing extracts : — 

" No church hath power of government over an- 
other, but each of them hath chiefe power within 

1 Quoted by Thornton, pp. 53, 54. 



1 68 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1643. 

itselfe, and all of them equall power one with an- 
other ; every church hath received alike the power of 
binding and loosing, opening and shutting the King- 
dom of Heaven. Finally all of them are candle- 
sticks of the same precious metall, and in the midst 
of them all Christ equally walketh." 1 

" Though one church claim no power either of 
Ordination or Jurisdiction over another, (for we 
know of none such given us by Christ), yet wee 
maintain brotherly Communion one with another, so 
far as wee may also help forward our mutuall Com- 
munion with the Lord Jesus." 2 

John Owen and Thomas Goodwin were in Eng- 
land, says Anthony a Wood, " the Atlases and patri- 
archs of Independency." Among the laymen beyond 
all others in power were Cromwell and Vane. How 
did these foremost English Independents stand re- 
lated to John Cotton ? Owen declares that he was 
converted to Independency by Cotton's " Keyes," 2 
while Goodwin, likewise his convert, was the princi- 
pal medium for the diffusion in England of Cotton's 
writings. Philip Nye was not less affected. " Master 
Cotton did take Independency up and transmit it to 
Master Goodwin, who did help to propagate to sun- 
dry others in Old England first, and after to more in 
Holland, till now, by many hands it is sown thick in 
divers parts of this kingdom." 4 To Cromwell, Cotton 
was an " esteemed friend " to whom he wrote with 
affection and reverence ; 5 while it is scarcely too 

1 The Keyes, p. 12. 4 Baillie in 1645, quoted by 

2 Way of the Churches, chap. Thornton, p. 54. 
vi. Sec. 1. 6 Carlyle, ii. 9. 

3 Thornton, p. 54. 



i643-] THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT. 1 69 

much to say that Vane was " trained in Cotton's 
study." l There on the steep side-hill of the Tri- 
mountain the two men lived together during Vane's 
New England sojourn. To the minister's house the 
young Governor made an addition, turning his prop- 
erty over to his friend's family when the time came 
for his departure. Under that roof they took counsel 
together while the Pequots threatened : there they 
strengthened one another in the dreadful days of the 
Hutchinsonian controversy, when the whole colony 
turned against them and the Boston Church : there 
they labored together over a code of laws, which was 
found in Cotton's study after his death. It was with- 
out doubt while in communion with this powerful 
character that the youth imbibed the spirit with 
which he became charged. The spot ought indeed 
to be held in veneration, upon which once stood the 
dwelling of John Cotton and Henry Vane! 2 

Like the New England so the Old England Inde- 
pendency regarded for the most part, at first, only 
the matter of Church government, Independents no 
less than Presbyterians subscribing to the Calvinistic 
formulae, and being often very intolerant. We for- 
get how modern the idea of Toleration is. A trace 
of it may be found in " Mores Utopia " and French 
writers of the 16th century, but the first perception 
of the full principle of liberty of conscience belongs 
to the English Separatists, the Baptists in particu- 

1 Thornton, pp. 56, 57. is still extant. See a communica- 

2 There is some reason for sup- tionof Mr. D. T. V. Huntoontothe 
posing that a considerable portion Boston Traiiscript, Monday, July 
of this house, removed from its 30, 1883. 

Boston site to the town of Canton, 



170 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1643. 

lar. 1 We find it announced by English Baptists in 
Holland in 161 1. Soon after, in Leyden stands the 
reverend figure of John Robinson, who scarcely falls 
short of the Baptists, advocating a broad charity to- 
wards those of different faith, and freely admitting 
that as regards the creed which he himself professes, 
more light in the future must be looked for. His 
congregation became the Pilgrims, the " Mayflower " 
company. The noble pastor, to be sure, never set 
foot upon the new world, but something of his spirit 
survived among the flock. Soon we find Vane pro- 
claiming, in the controversy with Winthrop, the idea 
of Toleration, and side by side with him the free- 
tonoried enthusiast Ro^er Williams. 

Very early the spirit of Independency in Old Eng- 
land became freer than in New England, and that 
freedom came more and more to prevail. After the 
meeting of the Long Parliament, Toleration seemed 
to rush into the air. Churchmen as well as Puritans 
were working that way ; the names of Fuller, Chil- 
lingworth, and Jeremy Taylor among these should 
stand in letters of light. Just at the crisis when the 
days for the Parliament were the darkest, in June, 
1643, no other than Roger Williams himself appeared 
in London, known and beloved by Vane since they 
two had struck hands together to ward off the Pe- 
quot scalping-knives. He was Vane's guest at his 
house in London, at his seat of Belleau in Lincoln- 
shire. One can imagine how Vane's tendencies must 
have quickened under the stimulus to which he was 
now subjected ; for Roger Williams, driven to com- 

1 Masson, Life of Milton, iii. 98, etc. 



1643-] THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT. 171 

bat by the narrowness of John Cotton and Richard 
Mather, was about to proclaim liberty of conscience 
to the world in tones never more to be silenced. Al- 
ready he was burning with the thoughts and yearn- 
ings which in a few months were to be poured into 
that epoch-making book, " The Bloudy Tenent of 
Persecution for Cause of Conscience Discussed in a 
Conference between Truth and Peace." x Its bold 
and passionate tone may be judged from a few of the 
marginal summaries : " Evil is always evil, yet per- 
mission of it may in case be good." " Christ Jesus 
the deepest politician that ever was, and yet he com- 
mands a toleration of anti-Christians." " Seducing 
teachers, either Pagan, Jewish, Turkish, or anti- 
Christian, may yet be obedient subjects to the civil 
laws." " Christ's lilies may flourish in his church 
notwithstanding the abundance of weeds in the world 
permitted." " Forcing of men to godliness or God's 
worship the greatest cause of the breach of civil 
peace." " The civil magistrate owes two things to 
false worshippers: 1. Permission, 2. Protection." 

In the .preface to the " Bloudy Tenent " Roger 
Williams refers to one whom Gardiner supposes can 
have been none other than young Sir Henry Vane. 
" Mine ears were glad and late witnesses of an 
heavenly speech of one of the most eminent of that 

1 Mr. Gardiner, while paying a Tenent," which Masson has over- 
high tribute to Masson's account looked. It is called " Liberty of 
of the rise of Toleration (Civil Conscience," and excited no atten- 
War, I, 337, 341), calls attention to tion whatever. It is to be found 
an exceedingly noble tract which among the Thomasson Tracts, 
preceded by three or four months xxxix. But even this would shut 
the publication of the " Bloudy out Catholics. 



172 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1643. 

High Assembly of Parliament: 'Why should the 
labours of any be suppressed, if sober, though never 
so different? We now profess to seek God, we de- 
sire to see light ! ' " 

As Vane grew in Independency, he grew also in 
the spirit of Toleration, and recognizing the narrow- 
ness of his old New England associates, from whom 
yet he had gained so much, he at this time lovingly 
urged them to unite liberty of conscience with the 
ecclesiastical freedom in which they had led the way, 
in the letter to Winthrop which has already been 
given. 1 

" The exercises and troubles which God is pleased 
to lay upon these kingdoms and the inhabitants in 
them, teach us patience and forbearance one with 
another in some measure, though there be difference 
in our opinions." 

So things stood in the summer of 1643. The 
cause of the Houses was languishing. Independency 
was rising, an American idea, and foremost among 
its professors stood young Sir Henry Vane. 

If Parliament had ever entertained the thought of 
sending Vane into the field to replace Hampden, it 
was abandoned, for he was required for a more im- 
portant service. Hard pressed as the Houses were, 
there was nothing for it but to call in help from out- 
side. Why not appeal to the Scots, our brethren in 
faith, though under a different ecclesiastical order ? 
our brethren, too, under the harrow of persecution? 
Early in July, Pym had taken action looking toward 

1 See p. 81. 



I643-] THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT. 1 73 

this. 1 From the Lords at length, Lord Grey of 
Warke and the Earl of Rutland, — and from the Com- 
mons, Sir Wm, Armyne, Thomas Hatcher, and young 
Sir Henry Vane, were made a committee to entreat 
for Scotch aid : to obtain this aid on terms at all 
tolerable was in a high degree difficult. Lord Grey 
refused and was sent to the Tower : Rutland with- 
drew under plea of sickness : the Commoners alone 
remained, among whom Vane was the only significant 
figure. At great length they were instructed to " de- 
sire that both nations may be straitly united and tied 
for our mutual defence against the Papists and Pre- 
latical Faction, and their adherents in both kingdoms, 
and not to lay down arms until they shall be disarmed 
and subjected to the authority and justice of Parlia- 
ment in both kingdoms respectively." With the Com- 
mittee were to go two ministers, Stephen Marshall and 
Philip Nye, the former a stiff Presbyterian, in high 
repute for eloquence and character, while the latter 
was already well known as one of tjie Independents. 
Both ministers were members of the great Westmin- 
ster Assembly of Divines, — a body convened by 
Parliament and at this time sitting side by side with 
it, to render help in settling ecclesiastical matters, 
which, now that the old-church government was abro- 
gated through the efforts of the " Root and Branch " 
men, required a thorough reorganization. 

The committee departed for Edinburgh by sea, 
the roads northward being in Cavalier hands. A de- 
spondency prevailed which could scarcely have been 
deeper. At the beginning of August, proposals for 

1 Old Parliamentary History, under date. 



174 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1643. 

peace were adopted by both Houses, which, says 
Clarendon, 1 if they had been sent to the King, would 
have been accepted, so far did they surrender the 
points in dispute. Essex was weary of the war in 
which he was chief commander, and the disposition 
was becoming general to submit : the recourse to the 
Scots was regarded as so " desperate a cure " that 
the nobles refused to go. But for the spirit of Lon- 
don, all would have been lost. Amid popular tu- 
mults, the city presented a petition which caused the 
Commons to withdraw from the reactionary policy. 
Nor was the zeal of London merely a matter of 
words. Gloucester, the most important fortress left 
to Parliament in the Midlands, was hard pressed ; 
if it fell, it would indeed be a coup de grace, and the 
London train-bands marched forth to its relief. The 
town and garrison were well worthy to be succored. 
When, on August 10, they were summoned, 2 "with 
the trumpeter returned two citizens from the town, 
with lean, pale, sharp, and bald visages, indeed faces 
so strange and unusual, and in such garb and fea- 
ture, that at once made the most severe counte- 
nances merry. . . . The men without any circum- 
stances of duty or good manners, in a pert, shrill, 
undismayed accent, said ' that they had brought an 
answer from the godly city of Gloucester to the 
King,' and were so ready to give insolent and sedi- 
tious answers to any question, as if their business 
were chiefly to provoke the King to violate his own 
safe-conduct." When they left, within a few paces 
of Charles they put on their caps which bore orange 

1 iii. 1746. 2 Clarendon, iii. 1470. 



1 643-] THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT. I 75 

cockades, the color of Essex. The town would hold 

/ 

out for the London train-bands. 

It was a weary sail for young Sir Henry Vane and 
his colleagues during those critical weeks. They 
left London on the 20th of July, not reaching Leith, 
the seaport of Edinburgh, until the 7th of August. 1 

The negotiation which was now to take place pro- 
duced very memorable results. The power of Vane 
was perhaps never more conspicuously shown : no 
passage in his career, moreover, has been so turned 
to his discredit, for many read in his conduct nothing 
but duplicity. Was a man of free impulses ever put 
in a harder place than Vane, when he was forced to 
undertake the Scotch negotiation ? Help was only 
to be had from Scotland, but the Scotch were relent- 
less persecutors. He went from the companionship 
of Roger Williams to deal with men who, with all 
their virtues, were the narrowest bigots of Protestan- 
tism. What a crushing down of his nature there 
must have been as he encountered that repugnant 
atmosphere ! 

The graphic Baillie gives an account of the recep- 
tion of Vane and his colleagues by the Convention 
of Estates and the Assembly of Ministers, both then 
in session, the latter considering among other busi- 
ness, " the late extraordinary multiplying of witches, 
especially in Fifeshire." 

" For the present the Parliament side is running 
down the brae. They would never in earnest call for 
help till they were irrecoverable ; now when all is 
desperate they cry aloud for help : and how willing 

1 Spalding, Hist, of the Troubles, under date. 



176 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1643. 

we are to redeem them with our lives you shall hear. 
The 8th, 9th, and 10th of August, the Moderator 
showed that two of the English ministers had been 
at him, requiring to know the most convenient way 
of their commissioners' address to the synod." 1 . . . 
The Assembly accordingly named a committee of 
nine, who, joined with others appointed for the same 
purpose by the Convention of Estates, met the Eng- 
lish envoys. " When we were met, four gentlemen 
appeared, Sir William Armyn, Sir Henry Vane the 
younger, one of the gravest and ablest of that nation, 
Mr. Hatcher and Mr. Darley, with two ministers, 
Mr. Marshall and Mr. Nye. 

" They presented to us a paper introduction, drawn 
up by Mr. Marshall, a notable man, and Sir Harry, 
the drawers of all their writs, . . . also their com- 
mission and a declaration of both Houses to our 
General Assembly, shewing their care of reforming 
religion, their desire of some from our Assembly to 
join with their divines for that end ; likewise a letter 
from their Assembly, showing their permission from 
the Parliament to write to us, and their invitation of 
some of us to come for their assistance ; further a 
letter, subscribed by above seventy of their divines, 
supplicating in a most deplorable style, help from us 
in their present most desperate condition. The let- 
ter of the private divines was so lamentable that it 
drew tears from many. . . . Above all, diligence was 
urged ; for the report was going already of the loss 
of Bristol, from which they feared his Majesty might 

1 Baillie : a Journal of the General Assembly, 1643, Sept. 22, to Mr. 
William Spang, p. 374, etc. 



1 643] THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT. I J J 

march for London and carry it. For all this we were 
not willing to precipitate a business of such conse- 
quence." 

The Scotch wished to help the English, but dif- 
fered about the way. " One night all were bent to 
go as ridders 1 and friends to both, without siding al- 
together with Parliament. This was made so plausi- 
ble that my mind was with the rest for it ; but Wa- 
riston showed the vanity of that motion and the 
impossibility of it. In our committee also we had 
hard enough debates. The English were for a civil 
league, we for a religious covenant. When they were 
brought to us in this, and Mr. Henderson had given 
them the draught of a covenant, we were not like to 
agree on the frame ; they were, more than we could 
assent to, for keeping of a door open in England to 
Independency. Against this we were peremptor. 
At last some two or three in private accorded to that 
draught, which all our three committees, from our 
States, from our Assembly, and the Parliament of 
England, did unanimously assent to. From that 
meeting it came immediately to our Assembly. . . . 
The minds of the most part was speired [asked], both 
of ministers and elders ; where, in a long hour's space, 
every man, as he was by the moderator named, did 
express his sense as he was able. After all consider- 
able men were heard, the catalogue was read, and all 
unanimously did assent. 

" Thursday August 17, was our joyful day of pass- 
ing the English covenant. The King's commissioner 
the Earl of Hamilton made some opposition ; and 

1 Mediators. 



178 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1643. 

when it was so passed, as I wrote before, gave in a 
writ, wherein he, as the King's commissioner, having 
prefaced his personal hearty consent, did assent to 
it, so far as concerned the religion and liberties of our 
church ; but so far as it concerned the Parliament of 
England with whom his majesty, for the present, was 
at odds, he did not assent to it. The moderator & 
Argyle did always so overawe his grace, that he made 
us not great trouble. Friday the 18th, a comm. of 
eight were appointed for London, of whom any 3 
were a quorum. Henderson, Douglas, Rutherford, 
Gillespie, I, Maitland, Cassilis, Warriston. Our last 
session was on Saturday, the 19th. The moderator 
ended with a gracious speech and sweet prayer. In 
no assembly was the grace of God more evident 
from the beginning to the end than here ; all de- 
parted fully satisfied. 

" 20th. On the Sabbath before noon, in the new 
church, we heard Mr. Marshall preach with great 
contentment. But in the afternoon, in the Gray 
friars, Mr. Nye did not please. His voice was clam- 
orous : he touched neither in prayer nor preaching 
the common business. He read much out of his 
paper-book. All his sermon was on the common 
head of spiritual life, wherein he ran out above all 
our understandings upon a knowledge of God as 
God, without the scriptures, without grace, without 
Christ. They say he amended it somewhat the next 
Sabbath." 

Let us take a Cavalier view of this memorable ne- 
gotiation. " Sir Harry Vane was one of the commis- 
sioners, and therefore the others need not be named, 



1 643-] THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT. Ijg 

since he was all in any business where others were 
joined with him. . . . There hath been scarce any- 
thing more wonderful throughout the progress of 
these distractions " than the passage of the Covenant, 
" when the main persons were as great enemies to 
Presbytery as they were to King or Church. And 
he who contributed most to it, and who in truth was 
the principal contriver of it, and the man by whom 
the committee in Scotland was entirely and stupidly 
governed, Sir H. Vane the younger, was not after- 
wards more known to abhor the Covenant, and the 
Presbyterians, than he was at that very time known 
to do, and laughed at them then, as much as ever he 
did afterwards. He was indeed a man of extraordi- 
nary parts, a pleasant wit, a great understanding, 
which pierced into and discerned the purposes of 
other men with wonderful sagacity, whilst he had 
himself vultum clausum, that no man could make a 
guess of what he intended. He was of a temper not 
to be moved, and of rare dissimulation, and could 
comply when it was not seasonable to contradict 
without losing ground by the condescension ; and 
if he were not superior to Mr. Hampden he was infe- 
rior to no other man, in all mysterious artifices. 
There need no more be said of his ability, than that 
he was chosen to cozen and deceive a whole nation, 
which excelled in craft and cunning : which he did 
with notable pregnancy and dexterity, and prevailed 
with a people, that could not otherwise be prevailed 
upon than by advancing their idol Presbytery, to 
sacrifice their peace, their interest, and their faith to 
the erecting a power and authority that resolved to 



l8o YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1643. 

execute Presbytery to an extirpation ; and very near 
brought their purpose to pass. . . . Vane (who 
equally hated Episcopacy and Presbytery, save that 
he wished the one abolished with great impatience, 
believing it much easier to keep the other from being 
established, whatever they promised, than to be rid 
of that which is settled in the kingdom) carefully con- 
sidered the Covenant, and after he had altered and 
changed many expressions in it, and made them 
doubtful enough to bear many interpretations, he 
and his fellow - commissioners signed the whole 
treaty." 1 

,£30,000 a month were to be paid to the Scots by 
the English Parliament, £"100,000 in advance, before 
a Scottish army crossed the border. A committee 
from Scotland was to sit at Westminster in connec- 
tion with an English committee, each empowered 
with equal authority for carrying on the war, and no 
treaty of peace was to be made without the consent 
of both kingdoms. A most critical and important 
negotiation having been in this way promptly con- 
cluded, a document at length comes forth destined 
to great fame under the name of the Solemn League 
and Covenant. 

Clarendon was no more thoroughly persuaded of 
the ability and duplicity of young Sir Harry Vane 
throughout this affair, than the Cavaliers in general. 

" Wise observers wondered to see a matter of 
that high importance carried through with little or 
no deliberation or debate . . . which made all appre- 
hend there was some first mover that directed all 

1 Clarendon, Bk. vi. vol. iv. 1582. 



I643-] THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT. l8l 

those inferior motions. This by one party was im- 
puted to God's extraordinary providence, but by oth- 
ers to the power and policy of the leaders, and the 
simplicity and fear of the rest. . . . The main of it 
indeed was managed by the superior cunning and 
artifice of Sir Henry Vane, who as Dr. Gumble tells, 
was very earnest with the Scots to have the whole 
called a league, as well as a covenant, and argued it 
almost all night and at last carried it. He held an- 
other debate about church government, which was to 
be ' according to the example of the best reformed 
churches.' He would have it only ' according to the 
Word of God ; ' but after a great contest they joined 
both and the last had the precedence. One of his 
companions afterward asking him the reason, why 
he should put them to so much trouble with such 
needless trifles, he told him he was mistaken and 
did n't see far enough into that matter ; for a league 
showed it was between two nations, and might be 
broken upon just reasons, but not a covenant. For 
the other, the church government, ' according to the 
word of God,' by the difference of divines and expo- 
sition would be long- before it would be determined. 
For the learnedest held it clearly for Episcopacy ; so 
that when all are agreed, we may take in the Scotch 
Presbytery." l 

Echard, as a boy, might have heard old Cavaliers 
talk of the Solemn League and Covenant. To Sir 
Philip Warwick, Vane is "sly Sir Henry Vane,'' 2 
while Hume speaks of his " artifice," declaring that 
he used " his great talents in overreaching the Pres- 

1 Echard, ii. p. 449, etc. 2 Memoirs, p. 296. 



1 82 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1643. 

byterians, and secretly laughed at their simplicity." l 
The Scotch came soon after to take a view of Vane 
not less severe than that of the Royalists ; Baillie, 
among others, to whom during the negotiations the 
imposing man of thirty-one had been " that sweet 
youth," at last regarding him as the main enemy of 
what was to be held most sacred. How far can any 
stigma here properly attach to Vane? In his youth, 
as we have seen, he became familiar at Vienna with 
the wiles of a most intriguing Court. In the affair 
of Strafford, perhaps his conduct is not free from a 
suspicion of unfairness. We shall find him here- 
after, as we have already found him, the deftest man- 
ager of his party, as regards the foe without and the 
factions within into which the Parliamentarians be- 
came presently split. As he was shrewd in his own 
contriving, so beyond all others he was acute in pen- 
etrating the devious ways of others. What basis is 
there in the facts for the charge of " overreaching " 
or " cozening " that was brought against him in the 
matter of the Solemn League and Covenant ? 

When Vane appeared at Leith, with his colleagues 
after their protracted voyage, one may believe that 
his powers were stimulated to the utmost. For his 
party, all had been on the brink of failure three weeks 
before, when the commissioners left London. The 
sole hope for the cause in which his heart was bound 
up was in winning the Scots, and it must be done 
instantly ; perhaps it was already too late. The 
impression which he always made, wherever he ap- 
peared, seems to have been unusually strong upon 

1 Hume, vol. vi. 261, 262. 



1 643] THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT. 183 

the Estates and the Assembly. The Scots, to be 
sure, were not at all averse to the alliance which the 
Parliament sought : they had plenty of old scores 
against Charles which they longed to wipe off. 
What made the negotiation critical was the different 
end which each nation sought. " The English were 
for a civil league, we for a religious covenant," says 
Baillie. Vane, guiding the negotiation for the Eng- 
lish, made no secret apparently of his dislike for 
narrow restrictions. " They were more than we 
could assent to for keeping of a door open in Eng- 
land to Independency," says Baillie; and Clarendon 
admits that Vane, by whom the committee " were 
entirely and stupidly governed, was not afterwards 
more known to abhor the Covenant and the Presby- 
terians than he was at that very time known to do." 
Vane, apparently, was straightforward in avowing 
what he stood for. 

What he did precisely was this : Alexander Hen- 
derson, presiding officer of the Assembly, the ablest 
and noblest of the Covenanters, the greatest name 
in the Scotch Kirk since the time of John Knox, 1 
had drawn up the agreement, following in the main 
the lines of the Covenant of 1638, which Scotland 
had solemnly and tearfully entered into against the 
usurpations of Laud. To this Vane offered amend- 
ments tending to greater vagueness in the religious 
part, and greater prominence in the civil. In the 
title he introduced the word League? and in the first 
article he inserted twice a phrase, accepted at last by 

1 Masson, Life of Milton, iii. 2 Neal, History of the Puritans, 
16. iii. 91. 



184 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1643. 

the Scots, but which the English were hereafter to 
take advantage of as a " door left open for Indepen- 
dency." The first article, namely, had stipulated, 1 
" that we shall all and each one of us sincerely, 
really, and constantly, through the grace of God, en- 
deavor in our several callings and places the preser- 
vation of the true Protestant reformed religion in the 
Church of Scotland, in doctrine, worship, discipline, 
and government, and the reformation of religion in 
the Church of England, according to the example of 
the best reformed churches." As amended by Vane, 
the article read, " the Church of Scotland in doctrine, 
worship, discipline, and government according to the 
Word of God, and the reformation of religion in the 
Church of England according to the same Holy Word 
and the example of the best reformed Churches." 
The inserted expressions had then a significance 
which they have not now. Slight as these changes 
seem, if we can trust Echard as just quoted, the in- 
sertion of League in the title was brought about only 
after an all night debate. Vane wished to strike out 
entirely the phrase " according to the example of the 
best reformed Churches," substituting simply the 
" Word of God," and the compromise through which 
both phrases at last appeared in the article was 
brought about only after another long debate. 

As to the remainder of Echard's story, that Vane 

j deliberately plotted " to take in the Scotch Presby- 

> tery," it must be rejected. Echard's authority is by 

no means the best, and we have testimony, which no 

candid mind will treat otherwise than most rever- 

1 Gardiner, Great Civil War, i. 270. 



I643-] THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT. 1 85 

ently, that Vane was honest in his negotiation, and 
was greatly troubled at the charge of chicanery in 
the matter, which Royalists and Presbyterians hurled 
at him as long as he lived. It was almost the last 
subject which occupied his thoughts. After his con- 
demnation in 1662, in certain "reasons for an arrest 
of Judgment" which he left behind, he states in 
beautiful terms the interpretation which he put upon 
the Covenant. 

" I will not deny but that as to the manner of pro- 
secution of the Covenant to other ends than itself 
warrants, and with a rigid oppressive spirit, to bring 
all dissenting minds and tender consciences under 
one uniformity of church-discipline and government, 
it was utterly against my judgment. For I always 
esteemed it more agreeable to the word of God, that 
the ends and work declared in the Covenant should 
be promoted in a spirit of love and forbearance to 
differing judgments and consciences, that thereby we 
might be approving ourselves ' in doing that to others 
which we desire they would do to us ; ' and so, though 
upon different principles, be found joint and faithful 
advancers of the reformation contained in the Cove- 
nant, both public and personal." 1 The last words 
which he put upon paper, just before laying his head 
upon the block, were : " That noble person, whose 
memory I honor, 2 was with myself at the beginning 
and making of the Solemn League and Covenant; 
the nature of which, and the holy ends therein con- 

1 State Trials, vi. p. 197. prized by Vane, whom the reader 

2 The reference is to the Mar- will come to know, who had suf- 
quis of Argyle, a friend highly fered his doom at an earlier time. 



1 86 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1643. 

tained I fully assent unto, and have been as desirous 
to observe ; but the rigid way of prosecuting it, and 
the oppressing uniformity that hath been endeavored 
by it, I never approved. This were sufficient to vin- 
dicate me from the false aspersions and calumnies 
which have been laid upon me, of Jesuitism and 
Popery, and almost what not, to make my name of 
ill savour with good men ; which dark mists do now 
dispel of themselves, or at least ought, and need no 
pains of mine in making an apology. For if any 
man seek a proof of Christ in me, let him read it in 
this action of my death, which will not cease to speak 
when I am gone : And henceforth let no man 
trouble me, for I bear in my body the marks of the 
Lord Jesus." 

To a biographer of Vane, this is almost like a 
voice from the grave. The " dark mists " are dis- 
pelled and " need no pains of ours in making an 
apology." The Scots understood that England as- 
sumed their own narrow Presbyterianism, with its 
complete intolerance : Vane and his friends gave the 
instrument a different interpretation, which they 
honestly felt it would bear. It will appear how a 
chasm at last opened between them which drank 
much blood. 

The Solemn League and Covenant, as the title 
now stood, one of the most memorable documents 
in the history of the English-speaking race, occupies 
about four pages of Neal. 1 We need, however, not 
occupy ourselves further with its diffuse phraseology. 
There were clauses providing for the abolition of 

1 History of the Puritans, iii. 92-95. American ed. 1 8 16. 



I643-] THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT. 1 87 

Episcopacy in England, the maintenance of the 
rights of the Parliaments of the two countries, and 
the bringing to trial of incendiaries and malignants. 
It was at once accepted by the Scotch Assembly, 
and on August 17, by the Estates. 1 Vane's work 
brought an army of twenty thousand hardy Scots to 
the succor of the perishing Parliament, to command 
whom a veteran was selected who probably was at 
that time held to be the best soldier of Great Britain ; 
this was Alexander Leslie, Earl of Leven, a captain 
seasoned under the great Gustavus, and who, as de- 
fender of Stralsund, had performed no less a feat of 
arms than to foil the terrible Wallenstein. On the 
26th of August, the Solemn League and Covenant 
reached London, where it was immediately acted 
upon by Parliament and the Assembly of Divines. 
Gloucester was still unrelieved ; the sword of the 
King's vengeance still hung over them suspended as 
it were only by a thread. The Scotch Commission- 
ers who were to reside in England during the alli- 
ance soon arrived, among them Henderson, Johnston 
of Wariston, and Baillie, and the 25th of September 
was appointed as the day when the Parliament and 
Assembly of Divines should swear to and sign the 
agreement in the church of St. Margaret. 

St. Margaret's stands, in its modest proportions, 
to-day as it did then, in the shadow of Westminster 
Abbey. The mural reliefs, the tombs, the columns 
of the interior rise as of old, broken here and there, 
perhaps by Roundhead blows, and darkened by the 
heavy air of London. Into this thronged on the 

1 Gardiner, Great Civil War, i. 272. 



I 88 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1643. 

appointed day the ministers in gown and bands, 
and the men from St. Stephen's, girt with the sword 
and with brows heavy with anxiety, as befitted the 
gloomy time. It should have seemed ominous to 
the Scots that Philip Nye the Independent, who had 
found little favor in Edinburgh, was appointed to 
preach. Nye took occasion to remind his hearers 
that the Covenant did not bind them to a servile 
imitation of their northern brethren. 1 Nevertheless 
the Scots took no offence. The solemn ceremony 
which bound the nations together was concluded, 
and among the signatures the names of Vane and 
Cromwell are side by side. 

1 Gardiner, Civil War, i. 276. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE COMMITTEE OF BOTH KINGDOMS. 

When the Solemn League and Covenant was 
adopted, Parliament had just lost the two great chiefs 
upon whom so far it had mainly depended. Hamp- 
den had died of his wound in the summer, and now 
Pym, fast sinking under a mortal disease, was with- 
drawn. Of the men now at the front, John Selden, 
a man of sixty, represented Oxford University, a 
scholar of vast reputation, of cool and sceptical 
spirit, whose motto was " Liberty above everything," 
rather a critic than an actor. He was the typical 
" Erastian," the party that put the civil above the 
ecclesiastical power, in reality a free thinker, and a 
sore thorn in the side to the ministers with his deli- 
cate mockery. Oliver St. John, a man of forty-six, 
solicitor-general, had great fame as a lawyer, dating 
from his famous defence of Hampden in the ship- 
money case. He was proud and reserved, of a dark 
and clouded countenance, and was called " the dark 
lantern man " of the Puritans. His wife was a cousin 
of Cromwell. Henry Marten was a man of forty-two 
from Berkshire, who, strangely enough, in this stern 
circle, was a loose liver and great wit. He was a 
soldier as well as a statesman, and bore himself in 



I90 YOUXG SIR HENRY VANE. [1643. 

either field with a devil-may-care good-natured reck- 
lessness that makes his career a refreshing streak in 
the gloomy Civil War annals, however unexemplary 
it may have been. " His company was incomparable, 
but he would be drunk too soon. His speeches were 
never long, but wondrous pertinent, poignant and 
witty. He would often turn the whole House by a 
happy jest." 1 He used often to take, says the old 
writer, in the House " dog sleep," which we may un- 
derstand no doubt as a " cat nap." One day, when 
he was thus dozing, a dull member then upon his 
feet, indignant at the slight, moved that he should 
be put out. Marten, whose wits were always about 
him, started at once to his feet with, " Mr. Speaker, 
a motion has been made to turn out the nodders : 
I desire the noddees may also be turned out." His 
ideas were of the broadest, and he came at last to be 
called atheist and communist. He, perhaps, was the 
very earliest Republican of the Long Parliament. 
In this very summer of 1643, ne na< ^ sa ^ m n * s pi ace 
it was " better one family should be destroyed than 
many," naming the King and his children, and hint- 
ing at a government without a King, an utterance 
for which he had been sent to the Tower. Although 
so much of a scape-grace, he was a favorite in his 
generation. Those cropped and steeple-hatted coun- 
sellors, fighting their terrible battle, forgot their 
perils in bursts of hearty laughter over his sallies, 
and now they are almost the only humorous relief 
that can be found in the tragic history. 

1 Aubry, quoted by Anthony a Wood, Athena Oxonienscs, art. 
" Marten." 



I643-] THE COMMITTEE OF BOTH KINGDOMS. 191 

With these men must be put Bulstrode Whit- 
locke, a solid lawyer, for reform on the whole, but 
much influenced by personal considerations, a man 
bound by precedents, and exceedingly useful in va- 
rious high official positions, carrying as he did a 
thread of legal order through tumults that some- 
times became anarchy, during the whole long dis- 
turbance. By no means his least important service 
was the compiling of his " Memorials," one of the 
best authorities for the time. 

Of far higher significance than the men mentioned 
were Cromwell and young Sir Henry Vane, who 
much surpassed the others in the qualities of leader- 
ship ; and since Cromwell for years was to be mainly 
a soldier, it was upon the shoulders of Vane, now just 
thirty-one years old, that the mantle fell of the dying 
Pym. " He was that within the House that Crom- 
well was without." x 

Already before the end of September, affairs for 
Parliament had a better look. The London train- 
bands saved Gloucester, and on their return under 
Essex fought a brave battle at Newbury, which, 
though not decisive, was more nearly a victory for 
Parliament than for the King. Hull in the North 
had maintained itself. After the signing of the Cove- 
nant, most of the Westminster Assembly, the flower 
of the Puritan clergy, went home with resolute hearts 
to calm and encourage their people. In the sober 
fashion, prayers were held each day in London, and 
at the drum-beat the people went out to work on the 

1 Baxter, Cn/amy's Abridgment of Baxter's life, p. 98. 



I92 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1643. 

defences. The tide seemed to be turning at last, 
and in the Parliament there was a general bracing 
up of spirits. On the 26th of October, 1 Vane made 
a relation in Parliament of the negotiation in Scot- 
land. We must think of him, in these days, as much 
at the bedside of Pym, who at length, on the 8th of 
December, ended his great struggle. For a last 
solemn service to his friend and teacher, Vane, as 
one of ten of the leaders of the Commons, lent his 
shoulder to the coffin as Pym went to his grave in 
Westminster Abbey. Young Sir Harry now stood 
in his place : one thinks that the serious brow must 
have assumed a new shade of gravity, as in the great 
funeral, the Commons in procession before, and the 
multitude behind, he marched in the dim wintry day 
down the lofty aisle. 

It was only gradually that Vane's Independency 
became revealed. No doubt, at first, however it may 
have been the case that a liberal utterance some- 
times fell from him, he was uncertain himself of his 
ground. To the unsuspecting Baillie and his col- 
leagues of the Scotch Commissioners now in London, 
he was " that sweet man Pym's successor," though 
very soon they begin to take on a different tone. 
The hour pressed, and even while Vane stood at the 
grave of the leader whose place he must try to fill, 
a demand was made upon his subtlety even greater 
than that during the negotiation with the Scots. 
The King, inveterate intriguer that he was, already 
in the fall 2 had made overtures to the Independents, 

1 Whitacre 's Diary, under date. 2 Gardiner, Civil War, i. 310, 

etc. 



1643d THE COMMITTEE OF BOTH KINGDOMS. 1 93 

who grew more prominent every day, promising a 
broad toleration in case peace could be secured. 
How hollow was his purpose came presently to light 
on the discovery of certain plottings of his with the 
Catholics, carried on at the same time. Vane was 
set to trap the fox, and showed himself conspicu- 
ously skilful. 

As regards the King's overtures to the Indepen- 
dents, a certain Lord Lovelace, acting in his name 1 
" by a secret messenger and letter to Sir Henry 
Vane, did to this effect impart : that the King hav- 
ing taken notice of him and others of his judgment, 
and conceiving them to be real and hearty in their 
intentions, did promise unto them liberty of con- 
science, and that all those laws that have been made 
by Parliament, and all others, the rights and liber- 
ties of the people, should inviolably be preserved : 
of which he would give what assurance could be de- 
vised." Through Lovelace, Charles assured Vane 
that he knew his true inclination to the public good, 
that he knew he belonged to a strong party in the 
Commons of which he was the chief, and desired 
him to send a trusty and able messenger to negotiate 
for him. Vane proceeded circumspectly. He ad- 
vised with the Speaker and a few of the wariest 
heads of the Commons as to the best course to be 
pursued. An answer of seeming compliance was at 
length sent back, and an agent appointed. It was 
soon discovered that " the utmost of the design was 
only to entrap Sir Henry Vane, by first inviting him 
to the conference, and then discovering it underhand, 

1 Anti-Aulicus, Feb. 1644, Thomasson Tracts, xxxi. 



194 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1643. 

and so render him obnoxious to the mistake and ill 
opinion of good men." 1 

It is good evidence of the consequence attached 
to Vane, now that Pym and Hampden were gone, that 
Charles was popularly believed to be intriguing in 
this way to break down his reputation. 2 There is 
still more to this transaction. The relations between 
the two Houses at this time were, in modern phrase, 
very strained. Lord Holland, who had forsaken his 
place at Westminster and joined the King, thinking 
better of his defection, had returned in the winter 
of 1643 to the House of Lords, assuming his seat 
quietly without making any explanation of his con- 
duct. The Commons, enraged, resolved to impeach 
him of high-treason. The Lords sought to shield 
him, and by way of retaliation, news having leaked 
out of the Independent transactions with Lovelace, 
it was " proposed " to charge Vane and his fellows 
with high-treason for holding intelligence with Ox- 
ford. Vane, however, " prevented " the Lords by 
making at last a full and public report to the Com- 
mons, all motive for concealment being now removed, 
whereat great pleasure was expressed, and Vane was 
thanked " for his wise and faithful carriage." 3 

While Vane delved thus below the mine by which 
he was himself to have been hoist, he was busy un- 
earthing still other petards which sly Charles was 
trying to explode against the gates of his enemies. 
While the King was reaching out for the Indepen- 

1 Whitacre's Diary, Jan. 17, 3 Anti-Aulicus, Feb. 1643. Old 
1644. Style. 

2 Baillie, 426, etc. 



1 644.] THE COMMITTEE OF BOTH KINGDOMS. 1 95 

dents, his intrigue with the Catholics was as follows ; 
Reade, a Catholic who had been confined in the 
Tower, escaping to Oxford, advised the King to open 
negotiations with a certain Sir Basil Brooke, of the 
same faith, about winning over London to the King. 
Brooke, being addressed, agreed to do his utmost, be- 
lieving that there was a wide-spread dissatisfaction, 
because the train-bands were absent so much and so 
far, and because trade was so depressed. His main 
instruments were Violett, a Royalist goldsmith, who 
had been imprisoned for refusing to pay his tax, and 
Reyley, an official of the city known as the " scout- 
master," perhaps a detective officer. The King's 
letter, which Parliament got hold of, adapted for Cath- 
olics, was vastly different in tone from his communi- 
cations to the liberty-loving Independents. Baillie l 
writes to Scotland in his usual vivid way about this 
matter, and in the newspapers of the Thomasson 
Tracts interesting lights are thrown on the plot, and 
the rejoicings which followed its discovery. 

When the plot was " on the point of breaking out 
in execution, some favor of it coming to the nose of 
young Sir Henry Vane, he calls the Solicitor [St. 
John] and my Lord Wharton to meet in Goldsmith's 
hall on Thursday at eight o'clock at night ; sends in 
a friendly way for Reyley, no ways suspecting him (a 
deep rascal, a leader in the city council, esteemed 
very religious) ; yet finding him confused in his an- 
swers and more reserved than they expected, after 
long conference to little purpose, the Solicitor, walk- 
ing up and down the room, pensive and musing, kicks 

1 Letters, Feb. 18, 1644. 



I96 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1644. 

with his foot a bit of paper on the floor, as a foul 
clout. In his turns he kicks it now and then till it 
came to the side of the fire on the hearth ; and when 
it was ready to burn, the sweet man, Pym's successor 
[Vane] began to think possibly there was somewhat 
in that paper might do good: taking it up, he finds 
it, reads the letter which had fallen from Reyley. 
Upon this they made Reyley void his pockets all 
wherein they found so much as led them to Sir Basil 
Brooke and Violett, who were presently sent for, and 
afterwards their papers also ; whereupon all that 
night was spent, and before the autographs of the 
King's letters were found, all was made plain." 

The danger seems to have been great and the dis- 
covery excited much interest. At Guildhall there 
was " a large demonstration of all to a huge number 
of citizens, to their manifold exclamations and cries 
for justice." Of those who addressed the crowd 
Vane was the principal. He made first a short pro- 
logue, 1 " that you may see the design in its lively 
colors, and that as you have had it summarily pre- 
sented to you, you may now hear the parties them- 
selves speak." The details of the discovery of the 
plot were then given, ending with the proclamation 
of the King, which at the proper time was to have 
been spread abroad. " This," continued Vane, " suf- 
ficiently discovers to you how palpable and gross 
they are, that all this fair and foul weather is made 
up only to shift hands to work the same design of 
sowing division and dissension among us, that so 
their party might prevail." Referring to the accusa- 

1 Thomasson Tracts, xxix. 



1 644.] THE COMMITTEE OF BOTH KINGDOMS. 1 97 

tion of the King, that in the Scots a foreign foe had 
been admitted into England, he called the attention 
of his hearers to the fact that the King himself was 
at the same moment introducing the Irish, " whereby 
they have let loose worse than a foreign nation, a 
nation imbrued in the Protestant blood, and settled 
upon principles for the utter destruction of the reli- 
gion and laws of this kingdom. . . . For the coming 
of the Scots, I believe you all know very well that 
the Parliament did think fit, rinding how near the in- 
terest of those two nations was conjoined in one, 
finding the constant love and amity of that kingdom 
to this, and how in its greatest extremity it was very 
punctual to it . . . they thought fit to enter into a 
treaty with them in solemn covenant, which treaty is 
now solemnly ratified by both kingdoms : yet this 
must be called an invasion. 

" Here is a second paper in the form likewise of a 
proclamation, whereby you shall see the unevenness 
and unsteadiness of his Majesty's councils, at least in 
appearance ; for though they be steady and united 
in that which is to bring destruction and ruin upon 
the Parliament and Kingdom, yet you may see them 
halt in their expressions. Before, you were called a 
famous city, you had deserved so well, and had all 
encouragements offered you : here, on the contrary, 
you shall see what language is given you, and be- 
cause the welfare of this city consists much in the 
residence of this Parliament, and courts of justice 
that are here, and of such persons of quality as are 
necessarily attendant thereupon, it is not now only 
thought fit to call away the Parliament from you, but 



ig8 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1644. 

the courts of justice, that so you might be left a mis- 
erable confused city, notwithstanding all the fair 
words and promises that have been given you." 

It was borne home upon all minds by Vane's 
speech, that the King was ready to make himself all 
things to all men and had no intention of fulfilling 
his promises. After a solemn fashion city and Parlia- 
ment rejoiced that the royal machinations had not 
sundered them. January 18, 1 Lords and Commons 
heard at Christ Church a sermon by Marshall, re- 
puted the best preacher in the Kingdom, after which, 
by invitation of the city, they proceeded to Mer- 
chant Tailors' Hall, " where they were moderately 
feasted, exceedings being declined in these sad and 
bleeding times." To the banquet the Common 
Council marched first ; then the Aldermen, then the 
Parliament, whom the train-bands, honestly exultant 
over their prowess at Gloucester and Newbury, 
guarded on each side. 2 " Against they came through 
Cheapside, there was set up a sleight scaffold of fir- 
poles, on which was fixed the statues and pictures 
of the fancied Roman gods, idolatrous superstitions, 
crucifixes, crosses, whips, &c. And as the Lords 
and Commons were passed by, they were all set on 
fire and burnt to ashes : the smoke, like incense, as- 
cended to heaven, as that which was acceptable to 
God." 

It is scarcely possible to exaggerate Vane's ser- 
vices rendered at this period to the cause of Parlia- 

1 Parliament Scout, fr. Jan. 1 2 2 The Scotish Dove, Thomasson 
to Jan. 19, 1643. O- S. Tracts, xxxi. 



I644-] THE COMMITTEE OF BOTH KINGDOMS. 199 

ment, services in which constantly appears a certain 
extraordinary astuteness which unfriendly authorities 
call cunning. The quality appears in a marked way 
in the unmasking of the duplicity of Charles, just 
narrated. It was now to receive still further illus- 
tration in the establishment of the Committee of the 
Two Kingdoms, a piece of work which increased 
marvellously the efficiency of the Parliament, and 
which was due mainly to the agency of Vane, sec- 
onded ably, as he always was in these days, by St. 
John. Curiously enough, the Committee of Both 
Kingdoms, a provision destined to affect the course 
of affairs very disastrously for the Royalists, was in 
its origin the outgrowth of a Royalist intrigue. The 
Earl of Hamilton, the agent of Charles at Edinburgh 
at the time of the negotiation of the Solemn League 
and Covenant, unable to thwart that measure, sought 
to gain his point indirectly. He brought it about 
that for the conduct of the war a small controlling 
committee should be insisted on, to be selected from 
the Parliaments of both countries, believing that 
English pride would never consent to this. Vane, 
however, acquiesced at once, feeling sure, no doubt, 
that his party could manage the Scotch members of 
such a committee, a confidence which the event justi- 
fied. This provision of the treaty with the Scots was 
obnoxious to the Peers and also to the peace party in 
the Commons, then very strong. The negotiators, 
the war party, however, were under obligation to 
carry it out ; they were anxious to do so, moreover, 
because they felt more and more, as time proceeded, 
the need of a concentration of power in a few hands, 



200 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1644. 

and believed that such a committee might be made 
an efficient executive head. While matters were still 
nebulous as regarded the war, during the uncertain 
days of the summer of 1642, a Committee of Safety- 
had been constituted, consisting of fifteen members 
divided between the Houses. This, however, since it 
was a mere channel of communication between Par- 
liament and the outside world, was found to have 
quite insufficient powers for the crisis. Parliament 
had now four armies in the field, those of Fairfax, 
Waller, Essex, and Manchester, not to speak of the 
Scots, who were in their pay. Among the Generals 
and their partisans there was bickering, and in the 
armies there was insubordination, — disorder sure to 
bring to pass fatal results in presence of a powerful 
enemy, and only to be remedied by establishing 
some strong central authority. Not until toward the 
end of January, through Parliamentary manoeuvring 
in which Vane and St. John bore a leading part, 
chiefs as they were of the war party, was the Com- 
mittee of Two Kingdoms established, to consist of 
seven Peers and fourteen Commoners, who were to 
be joined with the commissioners from Scotland. 
As we have here a good specimen of Vane's dexter- 
ous management, it is worth while to look closely at 
details. Knowing that the chief difficulty would be 
with the Peers, Vane and St. John persuaded their 
particular friend, Lord Say, to manage matters in the 
Upper House. The Lords were in some way caught 
napping, and passed an ordinance proposed by him, 
establishing the Committee, empowering it " to or- 
der and direct whatsoever doth or may concern the 



1 644.] THE COMMITTEE OF BOTH KINGDOMS. 201 

managing of the war . . . and whatsoever may con- 
cern the peace of his Majesty's dominions." In the 
Commons there was violent opposition from the 
peace party, partly because the measure came from 
the other House, of which the Commons felt great 
jealousy, but more because an executive government 
seemed about to be established, which might in all 
things set aside Parliament itself. Vane and St. 
John met the objections by opposing the Lords' ordi- 
nance and introducing a new ordinance proceeding 
from the Commons, establishing a Committee which 
should have only military authority, while as regards 
peace matters Parliament was to retain the supervis- 
ion. The Commons, propitiated by what seemed a 
large concession, passed this. When the new ordi- 
nance reached the Peers, it found them in a more 
wakeful state than before. It was really far less 
sweeping than their own ordinance, but now the 
Peers violently opposed, feeling that it would be a 
heavy blow to them. It was, nevertheless, at length 
passed on February 16, but the duration of the com- 
mittee was restricted to three months. 1 

Now to a small, independent, responsible body 
authority was given in war matters, a measure sure, 
if the Committee were well chosen, to increase im- 
mensely the efficiency of the resistance to the King. 
When the time of the Committee expired, in May, 
there was a most critical moment when there was no 
central authority but a discordant Parliament to 
direct an active campaign. Vane's tact which had 
got in the entering wedge now cleaved the difficulty. 

1 Civil War, i. 360. 



202 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1644. 

The original ordinance, which had come down to the 
Commons from the Lords, the "omnipotent ordi- 
nance," as it was called, because it gave the Commit- 
tee authority in peace as well as war, — passed as we 
have seen when the Lords were napping, had never 
been rejected by the Lower House, but simply laid 
aside. It was now taken up and passed by the Com- 
mons, its opponents having lost power. It had already 
passed the Lords, and did not require to be referred 
to them again. " The baffled Lords, circumvented by 
a trick, had to look on without the possibility of giv- 
ing effect to their dissatisfaction, when the old Com- 
mittee met on May 24, to continue its work." 1 It 
was the old Committee, but through the shrewd 
manoeuvring, it possessed powers vastly extended. 

Gardiner regards the formation of the Committee 
of Both Kingdoms as having a still farther and 
wider interest. Here we may see, he thinks, the 
first germ of a political union between England and 
Scotland, and also the first germ of the modern cab- 
inet system. 2 

The Committee of Both Kingdoms which met at 
Derby House, near St. Stephen's, brought thus into 
existence, as Baillie sa)'s, " over the belly of its oppos- 
ers," consisted of twenty-one members from England, 
seven Peers and fourteen Commoners, — from Scot- 
land of the four or five commissioners. Parliament 
put upon it its ablest men, and among them were 
both the Vanes. The records of the Committee, in 
those days most jealously guarded, are kept in the 

1 Gardiner, Civil War, i. 404. Whitacre's Diary. 

2 Civil War, i. 360. 



i644-] THE COMMITTEE OF BOTH KINGDOMS. 203 

Public Record Office in two forms, known in the 
language of the Office as the "draft" and the "fair." 
The " draft " record is the jotting down, made by 
Gualter Frost, the secretary, while the business was 
in process. The " fair " record is the carefully made 
copy of the jottings, drawn up afterward at leisure, 
for easy consultation. Both " draft " and " fair " have 
passed through the hands of the present writer. A 
rigid oath of secrecy, imposed upon all members, kept 
back proceedings from the world. As one to-day 
pores over the pages (the penalty would once have 
been a dungeon in the Tower), he feels admitted be- 
hind the veil, and seems almost to touch the hands 
and hear the voices of the great Parliamentary chiefs. 
On every page, though the record is meagre, giving 
only the orders of the Committee with little report 
of the discussions which must have attended their 
adoption, the prominence of Vane is plain. He is 
frequently sent to Parliament with communications, 
a fact implying that he originates the measures to be 
submitted, or at any rate is especially capable in rec- 
ommending and defending them. In financial man- 
agement he is in the foreground, superintending the 
vast sequestrations of the property of " Malignants," 
stirring up the city to raise money and send out 
succor, providing for the proper disbursement of the 
great subsidy to the Scots. He cares for the sending 
of powder and match to Hull for the northern army, 
bargains with men in Kent about draught-horses 
for Sir William Waller, and has a careful eye toward 
Ireland, in which quarter the machinations of the 
King just now are especially dreaded. In most of 



204 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1644. 

the action other names. are associated with his, often 
that of his father, but the best evidence exists that 
his audacity, deftness, and zeal are at the heart of all 
proceedings. 

While the Committee of Both Kingdoms had been 
getting under way, the active campaign for the new 
year had been preparing. Besides the intrigues with 
the Independents and the London Catholics, the 
King had also been plotting with Papists in Ireland. 
All came to naught ; as did also an open negotiation 
between the hostile parties, undertaken by Harcourt, 
the French ambassador. The sword must again be 
resorted to, and Charles now broke more definitely 
than before with his enemies, by denying to the Par- 
liament at Westminster all legal status. There 
remained of the original Long Parliament but 
twenty-two Lords and three hundred and eighty 
Commoners ; of these one hundred were absent in 
various services. With the King at Oxford were 
forty-five Lords and one hundred and eighteen Com- 
moners, and with these the King undertook in Jan- 
uary to set up a rival Parliament. Moreover, at 
St. Stephen's the want of harmony was great be- 
tween the two Houses and also between the parties 
who, within the Houses, favored respectively peace 
and war. The campaign opened favorably for the 
Parliament. Sir Thomas Fairfax cut to pieces at 
Nantwich a force from Ireland which had come to 
succor the King, and Waller defeated Hopton in the 
South. In the winter, the punctual Scots, marching 
knee-deep in snow, to the number of 20,000, had 
crossed the border under the veteran Leven, and 



1 644-] THE COMMITTEE OF BOTH KINGDOMS. 205 

touched hands with Fairfax. As soon as the Com- 
mittee of Both Kingdoms could get to work, this 
improvement in affairs was wonderfully promoted. 
Heretofore the King had known, through his friends, 
whatever was projected in the Parliamentary camp : 
now all was secret. Suddenly Manchester, Fairfax, 
and Leven united, were besieging his General, the 
Earl of Newcastle, whom they had shut up in York, 
and news came also that Essex and Waller were 
marching upon Oxford. Against this threatening 
front of the Parliament, Charles, relying much, prob- 
ably, upon a shrewd Scotch soldier in his suite, the 
Earl of Brentford, opposed himself vigorously and 
skilfully. He ordered at once to the succor of 
York Rupert, who spurred through Lancashire dur- 
ing June, taking town after town, rolling up at the 
same time a most formidable force. Charles him- 
self, manoeuvring dexterously, defeated Waller at Cro- 
predy Bridge, close by Oxford, then pursued Essex, 
who was making his way into the West. 

On the 3d of June x Vane was sent to the army in 
the North by the Committee. His ostensible errand 
was to ur£e the sending of Manchester and Fairfax 
to oppose Rupert in Lancashire. He was thus ac- 
credited to the three nobles in command : 2 — 

" The Committee of Both Kingdoms upon anxious 
consideration had of ye affairs in ye northern parts, 
and of what great concernment ye success of them 
will be to ye three kingdoms and because ye mutual 
consults between ye com 1 ?. 6 and ye Lords cannot so 

1 Order Book of Comm. of Both 2 From "Letters Sent." State 
Kingd. Papers, Domestic, E. 18. 



206 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1644. 

fully and speedily be recommended each to other 
by letters as by one of themselves acquainted with 
their debates and conclusions — they have therefore 
intrusted Sir Henry Vane ye yonger to repayre to 
y r Ldships to whom they desire that your Ldships 
would oive full credence in such matters as he shall 
impart to you from this Committee." 

The letter was signed by the Earl of Northumber- 
land and Lord Maitland, representing respectively 
the English and Scotch commissioners, and a copy 
sent to each of the three Generals. 

Vane had however a secret mission, none other 
than to arrange, if possible, for the deposition of 
Charles, of whose faithlessness he and his friends had 
now become thoroughly convinced, and the raising 
to the throne of his nephew Charles Louis, the young 
Prince Palatine, the elder brother of Rupert, pre- 
cisely in the way in which, fifty years afterward, 
William of Orange was substituted for James II. 1 
The Scotch Commissioners had opposed the scheme 
when broached to them, but Vane thought the sol- 
diers would receive the idea more favorably than the 
politicians. As regards both his open and secret 
mission, Vane was doomed to disappointment. It 
proved to be inexpedient to abandon the siege of 
York, even to block the path of Rupert ; and as to 
the deposition of Charles, not one of the three Gen- 
erals, Manchester, Lord Fairfax, or Leven, would 
listen to the idea. Leven and the Scots, in partic- 

1 Gardiner, Civil War, i. 431, of such a supersession. SeeZz/l' 
etc. Forster thinks that Pym and of Cromwell, 415. 
Hampden had entertained the idea 



1644] THE COMMITTEE OF BOTH KINGDOMS. 207 

ular, were violent in their antagonism. It is highly- 
probable, however, that Cromwell, who had now risen 
to be second in command in the army of Man- 
chester, was won, 1 and that here began a fierce 
quarrel between him on the one side, and Man- 
chester and the Scots on the other, which ended 
at last in the disappearance of Manchester from the 
stage, and, in the case of the Scots, in torrents of 
bloodshed. 

While Vane was absent, the Committee at Derby 
House, feeling that they could ill spare his brave and 
shrewd head, ordered " that a ltr. be written to Sir 
Henry Vane Jr., to let him know that the Com tee ex- 
pects that he will returne by the tyme limited in his 
instructions." 2 On June 30, the name of Vane oc- 
curs as again present, and on the day following he is 
thanked " for his great paynes and faithfull discharge 
of his employment to the North." He was sent at 
once to Parliament to report news of the " leaguer 
before York," and received here, too, public thanks. 3 
During his absence he had not left the Committee 
uninformed of his adventures. The following ex- 
tracts from letters are copied from the letter-book 
of the Committee : — 

" My Lords & Gent : Notwithstanding all ye dilli- 
gence I endeavoured to make in obeydience to yo r 
Comand for my speedy repaire hither: I found ye 
weather soe bad, the wayes soe deepe, and the horses 

1 The evidence for this rests 2 Order Book, 
upon reports of the French and 8 Journals of the House of Corn- 
Venetian ambassadors, ably sum- mons. 
marized by Gardiner. Ibid. pp. 
432, 433- 



208 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1644. 

soe difficult to be speedily gott, that it was ye Lord's 
day at night before I could reach ye Leaguer. Since 
w ch time I delivered yo r Lops ltrs. and communi- 
cated yo r desire cone, the releife of Lancashire accord- 
ing to my instructions [so far literal]. We herein 
had yesterday a very long and serious debate before 
the three Generals and chief officers of the army and 
likewise at ye Committee of Both Kingdoms, 1 and no 
certain resolution as yet able to be taken concerning 
the same. In regard ye siege before York hath no 
foot to spare, and ye citty is in so hopeful a condition 
of being suddenly gained either by force or treaty, it 
is nowise advisable to give any interruption there- 
unto for the present. . . . According as I find mat- 
ters here it does appear to me most clearly, that if 
the Earl of Manchester had not brought up his foot 
to this siege, the business would have been very dila- 
tory. Whereas upon the coming up of his foot the 
siege is now made very streight about ye city, his 
Lordship's forces lying on the north side where they 
have come very near ye walls and are busy in a mine, 
of which we expect a speedy accompt, if by a treaty 
we be not prevented. The Scots forces under Sir 
James Lumsdale's command, united with those of 
the Lord Fairfax, possess the suburbs at the east 
part, and are within pistol shot or less of Wamgate. 
The Scots hold that fort on the south side which 
very gallantly they took in on Thursday last, and are 
very busy in their approaches on that side. . . . 



1 A committee with the army which had the same name as that at 
Derby House. 



1 644] THE COMMITTEE OF BOTH KINGDOMS. 209 

"June 16. 

" Since my writing thus much, Manchester played 
his mine with very good success, made a fair breach 
and entered with his men." Leven and Fairfax, how- 
ever, are ignorant of it, so Manchester is beaten off, 
but with no great loss. " I would gladly see York 
taken in before my return," which now draws very 
near. He is pressed to stay because the Committee 
there are not a quorum without him. 1 

From the Thomasson Tracts some specimens of 
the newspaper comments, Royalist and Parliamen- 
tarian, on Vane's mission are given. 

" But young Sir Henry Vane is now come back 
to London, and will charme that mutinous body by 
declaring all its priviledges, as fast as he and his 
father can remember them. He stept down to Yorke 
to take an account of the Scots, whom he invited 
into England ; and findes them very tender of laying 
down their lives, Fairfax and Manchester having 
been still tasked to all hard work. Yet the Scots 
were the first and the last which were paid, &c. . . . 
Notwithstanding all this Sir Henry cheered the 
houses that all was well with the Northerne armies 
(Manchester meanwhile saying if his men did not re- 
ceive their arrears they would all forsake him) that the 
Generalls intended at his coming away to send 25,000 
to oppose Prince Rupert's coming ; and yet leave 
sufficient force to keep them up in Yorke ; But, said 
he, you must have a care of the associated counties, 
for the Earl of Manchester cannot return till August 
be past (How now Sir Henry ? not till August be 

1 S. P., Dom., Interregnum^ E. 16. 



2IO YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1644. 

passed ? Why what s become of his Lordship ? Are 
he and his father both together ?) But Sir Henry 
had no sooner ended but in came letters from Ar- 
myne, &C." 1 Mercurius Britannicus rallies Aulicus. 

" Yes, why did you not intercept him [Vane] by 
the way ; because you have not so much as an acre 
of ground from London to Yorke to ride upon ; I 
think your inheritance will shortly be in hospitals 
and alms-houses. . . . 

" He tells us all the speech of our gallant and wor- 
thy senator Sir H. Vane." 2 

July 4, we find Vane reporting certain news just 
received from the army where he had lately been a 
guest. " Manchester, Leven, Fairfax had raised the 
siege before York, carried all their men, horse, artil- 
lery, and baggage over the river with intent to meet 
Prince Rupert said to be in those parts with a puis- 
sant army of near 30,000 men." 3 

Young Sir Henry Vane was not a soldier, but who 
that has read these pages can doubt that in the magni- 
ficent victory which this allied army of the North was 
about to win for Parliament, as much credit should 
be assigned to him as to any soldier who fought 
upon the field ! To him it was due more than to any 
other one man that Parliament, under the lead of the 
peace favorers, had not supinely come to an agree- 
ment with the King, leaving the fearful grievances all 
unredressed. To him, in a still greater degree, it was 
due, that twenty thousand hardy soldiers had come 

1 Mercurius Aulicus, July 4, the Parliament had for rejoicing 
1644. will presently appear. 

2 July 15, 1644. What reason 8 Whitacre's Diary. 



1644] THE COMMITTEE OF BOTH KINGDOMS. 211 

to the support of the failing cause. Scarcely less was 
it due to him, that a head had at last been given to 
what had been headless — that stern discipline had 
reduced to harmony insubordination and divided 
counsels — that a central authority had begun to 
control the sword wielded so often without result, 
however bravely. Who will say that Marston Moor 
does not belong to the story of Vane ? 1 

1 Among a number of authori- cial obligation to Markham, Life 

ties, contemporary as well as of of Fairfax, to Merivale, Macmil- 

later date, consulted for the Battle lan's Mag., May, 1862, and to San- 

of Marston Moor, I am under spe- ford's Great Rebellion. 



CHAPTER X. 

MARSTON MOOR. 

Against the allies before York the Earl of New- 
castle made a bold defence ; for Rupert was advanc- 
ing impetuously through Lancashire in the south- 
west, his power growing as a conflagration grows 
with its progress : toward the end of June he was 
with his horsemen close at hand. The Prince 
showed now more than ordinary skill. Leven, on 
the other hand, who was greatly deferred to, grizzled 
veteran that he was, was growing old and losing fire. 
The siege of York was raised, and the allies began to 
retreat toward the northwest : Rupert was instantly 
upon their track, his own confident host swelled now 
by the defenders of the town. Eight miles out, the 
Cavaliers pressed fiercely the Parliamentary rear, and 
at Long Marston Moor, on the 2d of July, Leven, 
much against his will, was forced to turn and face 
them. 

Few English towns have changed less than York 
in the two hundred and forty years since that time. 
The great minster still dominates the place, the 
beauty of pillar, turret, and rose-window finding a 
foil in the ugly gargoyles which spout the moisture 
from eave and buttress. The writer reached York 



1 644-] MARSTON MOOR. 213 

at the end of a summer afternoon, passing in under 
the ancient wall which girds the town yet, substan- 
tially as it was left by the King's engineers, of gray- 
stone, buttressed and battlemented, the ancient gates 
intact, with the same inscriptions and escutcheons 
as when they barred out the Parliament. I did not 
linger long, but was soon following the old Marston 
road along which the Parliamentary army withdrew 
with Rupert on their rear. To the westward, within 
a mile or so, soon appeared a heavy growth of forest, 
between which and the road lay a broad, marshy 
plain broken by hedges. The plain also extended 
southward, ending at the distance of half a league 
in a long low ridge ; grass-land it was, while on the 
ridge, the harvests, just reaped, were stacked high. 
These were all noteworthy localities. The forest 
was Wilstrop wood, of which there will be presently 
mention ; the ridge was the ground upon which the 
men of the Parliament paused and turned at bay; 
the marshy plain was Marston Moor, the entire land- 
scape probably little changed since the battle-day, 
except that what was then open moor-land is now an 
enclosed and cultivated tract. 

Long Marston has changed less, perhaps, than the 
fields about it. It is a straggling village of thatched 
cottages placed at irregular distances along a wind- 
ing street, homes of the farmers who apparently form 
the entire population, for there is no sign of manu- 
facture or trade. Inquiries after some one who knew 
something about the battle seemed likely at first to 
bring little to pass, but at last an old farmer was 
found who said that his stock, father and son, had 



214 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1644. 

been upon the spot almost since the battle-day, and 
who claimed to know the important points of the 
field. So between six and seven o'clock, the sun still 
bright of the long English summer day, the very 
hour when the battle began, the writer rode with the 
farmer, in a two-wheeled cart without springs, down 
a track which led into the centre of Marston Moor, 
and studied the field from the point where the fight 
was most desperate. 

Let us now look more closely at these two armies, 
each about twenty-five thousand strong, who are 
about to fight the greatest battle that has taken 
place on English soil since the Wars of the Roses. 
To form the force of the allies, two English armies 
had been joined to that of the Scotch, one led by the 
Fairfaxes, the young Sir Thomas becoming every 
day more noted, the other by the Earl of Manches- 
ter; in the latter army the cavalry was commanded 
by Cromwell, who so far had found but small oppor- 
tunity. The chief command was still in the hands 
of the old field-marshal of Gustavus, Leven, but it 
would have o:one hard with the Parliament had there 
not been better soldiers than he. Sir Thomas Fair- 
fax had covered the rear as the allies withdrew ; and 
as he began at Marston to feel the breath of Rupert's 
sharp pursuit, he sent hot alarm to the advance, post- 
ing himself at the same time at the village. He had 
some seasoned troops, but the horse of Lambert, a 
brilliant soldier during the years that followed, were 
raw recruits. Next to Fairfax, the line running west- 
ward along the ridge, Leven placed his centre or 
main " battle " as it was called, tough Scotch infan- 



1 644.] MARSTON MOOR. 215 

try, sternest Covenanters, massed in solid squares, 
the pikemen in the centre, the musketeers on either 
flank ; a superannuated arrangement which Gustavus 
had discarded, but the military pedant was afraid of 
innovations. Uncouth and often repugnant forms 
these old Covenanters are, as the investigator digs 
them out of the historic stratum which holds their 
fossils, as remote from our sympathies almost as the 
extinct saurians, — with their interminable sermons, 
their all-night theological debates, their all-day pray- 
ers ; — indeed, worse than that, for they burned 
witches and warlocks by the score, and a dismal ap- 
paratus of thumb-screws and torturing boots stood 
close at hand to their courts of justice. But what 
for-life-and-death-devotedness, what craggy strength, 
and in the end, what superb accomplishment, — that 
forceful Scotch character, which to-day leavens the 
world to such good purpose! Among them that 
day was the Lord Eglinton, called " old gray steel " 
for his courage, — Cassilis, known as the grave and 
solemn earl, while Lindsay, stanch enough to have 
been a son of John Knox, led the men of Fife. The 
Lords who were in command were generally inexpe- 
rienced, but the lieutenant-colonels and majors under 
them were often veterans from the Thirty Years' War, 
schooled, sometimes demoralized and steeled to all 
forms of ruthlessness, in desperate scenes of carnage 
and license. Among these the best soldier was Da- 
vid Leslie. The world has not often seen stouter 
men than were the Scots that day, but some of them 
were destined to gain little credit, rather perhaps 
through the force of circumstances than any failure 
of their own. 



2l6 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1644. 

West of the Scotch, who formed the centre, came 
the English infantry of the army of Manchester, one 
body commanded by Pickering, a young cousin of 
the poet Dryden, and another by a spirited boy of 
nineteen, Montague, destined to great fame after- 
ward as the Earl of Sandwich, one of the greatest 
of English Admirals. As the infantry to the east 
were flanked by cavalry, so to the west, at a village 
called Tockwith, at the extreme left of the Parlia- 
mentary line, were the troopers of David Leslie, be- 
tween whom and the infantry sat on their powerful 
chargers a body of about twenty-three hundred men, 
conspicuous at a glance from out the entire host, as 
in every way perfectly appointed and disciplined. It 
was the horse of Oliver Cromwell. Notice them 
well, out on the left wing there, the afternoon sun 
flashing from the left upon them as they steadily 
range themselves. 

What has the rude-looking squire whose careless 
dress so shocked in Parliament Sir Philip Warwick 
been doing through all the disturbed times ? He was^ 
early at the head of a troop of cavalry in the eastern 
counties, and though full forty-three years old when 
he took sword in hand, soon wielded it as if he were 
born for it. In the earlier desultory skirmishing he 
was foremost in many a raid, making himself espe- 
cially to be talked of by his promptness in circum- 
venting the authorities at Cambridge, who were 
arranging to send the university plate to the King. 
He was in the melee at Edgehill, where there is little 
record of what he did. This night, on Marston 
Moor, he was to win his first great fame — he and 



1 644-] MARSTON MOOR. 2 1J 

his men equally good at prayer, at sermon, and at 
sabre. At Warwick Castle you are shown the steel 
cap that covered the head of this most magnificent 
of Englishmen, as he galloped, and smote, and 
shouted his Old Testament war-cries, where the 
danger was thickest. 

So the twenty-five thousand stood ranged, their 
artillery in front, the line a mile and a half long, from 
Marston to Tockwith. As they took position they 
trampled down the tall grain just ready for harvest ; 
now and then a dash of summer rain incommoded 
them ; it is said that as Covenanter and Puritan 
sang their battle-hymns, low thunder in the heavens 
was heard in the pauses. 

As there was division in the host of the Parlia- 
ment, Scot and Englishman not coalescing with en- 
tire cordiality, so among the Cavaliers, Rupert had 
touched with his superciliousness the haughty soul 
of Newcastle. York had been relieved ; there were 
good military reasons for avoiding battle ; but Ru- 
pert's spur was hot, and he had galloped, as we have 
seen, after the withdrawing foe. Nevertheless, there 
was delay in forming the Cavalier line. Some of 
the regiments were mutinying for pay, and both 
Rupert and Newcastle, says a chronicler, " had been 
forced to play the orator to them " all the forenoon. 
At length, however, on the Moor, an answering line 
had placed itself opposite the Parliament. The 
Scots of the centre were opposed by a division of 
Newcastle's foot, among them the " White Coats," a 
superb body of troops composed of the Earl's own 
tenantry. Opposite Fairfax was posted Goring, 



2l8 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1644. 

with Urry for a subordinate, both conspicuous vil- 
lains, the latter a soldier of fortune of the most mer- 
cenary type, changing sides repeatedly, from King 
to Parliament, and Parliament to King, during the 
war. Already he had brought about the death of 
Hampden, guiding Rupert, to whom he had just de- 
serted from the Parliament, to the camp of those who 
had shortly before been his friends. In the battle 
about to begin, as the second of Goring, and with 
the help of a soldier of a different type, the high- 
minded knight Sir Charles Lucas, he was to come 
very near winning the victory for the King. The 
other wing, opposite Manchester and Cromwell, was 
held by Rupert's men : first his infantry ; then his 
horse, till now irresistible, five thousand troopers, 
into whom the Prince had poured a fire like his own. 
As the lines were forming, a Roundhead prisoner 
was brought in, of whom Rupert asked, pointing to- 
ward the Parliamentary right, "Is Cromwell there?" 
The Roundhead answered, " Yes." " Will they 
fight ? " continued Rupert. ' If they will, they shall 
have fighting enough." The prisoner was sent back 
to his friends unharmed with this message. " If it 
please God," said Cromwell solemnly under his hel- 
met, "so shall it be." 

The Prince wore, it is said, a scarlet cloak, and 
was followed by his huge white dog " Boy," concern- 
ing whom the wildest tales were believed. His 
master had found him and trained him in Germany, 
and he followed Rupert everywhere. Many a brave 
man's heart sank as the great brute passed him, for 
in that superstitious time, some said he was a fa- 




><v 



•■•••.■•■•.'*#"" : »*«ft- 



MARSTON MOOR. 

o 'A V, I mile. 

liliMg HQ\ja\\s\ 

I I ?av\\amen\arj 




1 644.] MARS TON MOOR. 219 

miliar spirit, — others, that he was a Lapland lady or 
a powerful wizard in disguise, — others, that he was 
the Devil himself. This night he was to meet his 
death while in the act of pulling down a Roundhead. 

While the lines were forming, heavy cannonading 
had been going forward from the twenty or thirty 
pieces which each side possessed. The foemen faced 
each other across a narrow interval, but a deep ditch, 
designed to drain the Moor, divided them, known as 
the White Syke. There was little difference in the 
appearance of the two armies, and the Parliament 
men wore therefore a white badge in their hats. 
Rupert's standard of silk, some five yards long and 
broad, emblazoned with the arms of the Palatinate 
and with a cross of red, waved over his life-guard. 
" God and the King," was the Cavalier watchword ; 
" God and our cause," that of Parliament. 

The fight began at seven, Manchester's foot and 
the Scots of the main body advancing in a running 
march across the ditch, and charging vigorously. 
Soon the two lines, equally eager, moved forward 
throughout their lengths ; the cavalry on both sides 
following rushed together at a gallop, with a clink- 
ing of blades, a crashing of armor, and a tumult of 
hoof-beats, that made the battle at once the wild- 
est tumult. Fairfax had at first the more difficult 
task, for he was forced to proceed through bad 
ground, by a narrow lane, crossing ditches, and im- 
peded by hedges of furze. Urry and Lucas struck 
his column with all the spirit possible, as it toiled 
toward them through the Moor; and in spite of all 
their leader could do, his force, with the exception 



2 20 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1644. 

of his own regiment, was soon in flight. Fairfax 
himself received across the cheek a deep sabre-cut, 
the scar of which he always bore, and his major, 
pierced with thirty wounds, died on the field. Lam- 
bert's recruits, in terror, rode over the infantry of 
their own side, until all were in flight upon the 
right, except the handful whom Sir Thomas could 
still hold firm. What became of him we shall pres- 
ently see. 

The Parliamentary right wing therefore was ut- 
terly broken and dispersed. How fared it with the 
centre? Lucas and Urry attacked it by the right 
flank, which the rout of Fairfax's wing had exposed. 
Here fought the "White Coats" of Newcastle, heroic 
troops, although that eve they had not the leadership 
of the Earl himself. He, assured by Rupert that 
there would be no battle that night, had gone to take 
a quiet smoke in his travelling carriage. Roused by 
the confusion of the Parliamentary onset before he 
had taken a whiff, he had sprung among the com- 
batants, but he fought without command as a simple 
volunteer. Stubborn as granite stood three regi- 
ments of the Scotch centre, those attacked and those 
attacking wrapped in battle-smoke, lurid with the 
frequent glare of cannon, — the deafening tumult of 
war-cries, the clang of armor, the staccato of mus- 
ketry rolling far away. Multitudes beside them 
did indeed break and flee, following in the track of 
the other fugitives. Amons: these was the Earl of 
Leven himself, who thought all was lost. A trav- 
eller who that eve was coming toward York has left 
a vivid account of the flying men who impeded his 



1644] MARS TON MOOR. 221 

progress along the road, — officers of foot without 
hat or sword, — horse and infantry mingled together 
to the number of many thousands, the Scots lament- 
ing dismally : " Wae 's us, we are all undone ! " As 
some of the Scots too soon lost heart, so the Cava- 
liers on their side believed too soon that the battle 
was gained, and parties of them fell to plundering 
the baggage on the ridge. It was negligence most 
ill-timed. 

The sun now was just at its setting, the level light 
tin^einor the war-cloud above the cumbered field. 
Though the day seemed lost on the side of Marston, 
the opposite wing had had different fortune. While 
the infantry of Manchester had boldly come to push 
of pike with the foe, the horse of Cromwell, minding 
as little the volleys of the musketeers whom Rupert 
had posted in the White Syke ditch as they had the 
summer rain of the afternoon, spurred forward. Ru- 
pert and many of his troopers had dismounted and 
were at supper, but all were in the saddle in an in- 
stant under the folds of the great banner. His own 
charge was as prompt and fiery as that of the Puri- 
tans, and the thousands of galloping horses and 
brandishing swords met together, like nothing so 
much as two oceans suddenly opposed. They stood, 
says the old describer, " a pretty while at sword's 
points, hacking one another." How horses, over- 
thrown, writhed and rolled upon their riders, how 
headpiece and corselet rang to lance and sabre, how 
the war-cries were shouted, the fierce Old-Testament 
phrase from the lip of Roundhead, the curse from 
Cavalier, the trampling and smiting, the prayers for 
mercy, the defiance, — how can it be told ? 



222 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1644. 

" Wouldst hear the tale ? On Marston Heath 
Met front to front the ranks of death. 
Flourished the trumpets fierce, and now 
Fired was each eye, and flushed each brow. 
On either side loud clamors ring, 
• God and the cause ! ' ' God and the King ! ' 
How each fierce zealot fights and bleeds 
For King or state as humor leads ! 
At trumpet's sound the battle's rage 
Was like the strife which currents wage, 
Where Orinoco in his pride 
Rolls to the main no tribute tide, 
But 'gainst broad ocean urges far 
A rival sea of roaring war. 

.... That heart of flame 
Hot Rupert on our squadrons came, 
Hurling against our spears a line 
Of gallants, fiery as their wine. 
But the stout Cromwell ne'er gave way; 
On his barbed horse he won the clay." J 

For a moment all seemed lost for the Parliament. 
Cromwell, wounded in the neck, was for the time 
being stunned. The Roundheads missing his shout 
recoiled, and were on the brink of ruin. David 
Leslie, however, drove in with his Covenanters like 
lightning on the Cavalier flank. Cromwell, dashing 
the stupor from his senses, was in an instant himself 
again. The steeds of the Cavaliers were forced back 
on their haunches, the line was beaten through and 
through : at last a great rush of panic-struck fugi- 
tives poured eastward to where the twilight was be- 
ginning to gather in the heavy Wilstrop wood. 

Just here it was, while Cromwell and Leslie paused 
from pursuit of the flying foe, that a group of pant- 
ing horsemen, with broken armor and steeds almost 
spent, suddenly appeared in the midst of the victors. 

1 Scott, Rokeby, Canto I. 12, 13. 



I644-] MARSTON MOOR. 223 

Their leader, scarcely recognizable through the gore 
from the sabre-cut upon his face, was wellnigh faint- 
ing, and all had evidently but just emerged from a 
life -and -death struggle. It was Fairfax, who from 
his conquered wing had cut his way through the 
pursuers. In the smoke and uproar, the ends of the 
long battle line had little idea how their comrades 
were faring. Fairfax brought the first news of his 
defeat. Instantly the horse of the left wing, not less 
perfect in discipline than ardent in courage, obeyed 
their leader's call, were back once more at the White 
Syke close at hand to the hard-pressed Parliamen- 
tary centre — " both sides not a little surprised that 
they must fight it over again, when each thought 
victory gained." The face of the battle was exactly 
counterchanged. In the twilight, what still remained 
unbroken of each army stood opposed, the Cavaliers 
on the original Roundhead ground, the Roundheads 
on that of the Cavaliers. In the shadows the fight 
became more than ever close and desperate, but the 
scale inclined to the Parliament. 

The White Coats stand alone at length, all the re- 
sistance beaten down about them, within the White 
Syke Close, a space on the Moor ditched in and 
difficult of access. Here they die, disdaining to flee, 
lying in ranks as they had stood, refusing all quarter. 
As the late day fades, the moon lights the awful 
battle-wreck upon which at length a hush descends. 
From a distance, however, from the gloom of Wil- 
strop wood and far along the road comes a sound of 
galloping hoofs, of the stroke of sword upon armor, 
of voices raised in entreaty. The victors, tireless, 



224 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1644. 

implacable, far into the night, pursue the fugitives 
to the gates of York. " God," says Cromwell, " gave 
them as stubble to our swords." " I am sure," said 
Rupert, " my men fought well, and know no reason 
of our rout but this : because the Devil did help his 
servants." Defeat was never more complete. More 
than four thousand, for the most part Cavaliers, were 
buried upon the field, and many more were slain 
in the pursuit. Thus the mighty Oliver bore Ru- 
pert to the earth, and Rupert it was who then and 
there gave him the name Ironside} 

So, at seven o'clock of the summer evening, the 
hour when the battle was beginning, the writer rode 
out of Marston village on to the battlefield in the 
two-wheeled cart, a wide-awake north-country boy 
driving:, with the old farmer for a siuide. The farmer 
told, as we proceeded, of the battlefield of Towton, 
close in the neighborhood, the scene of the bloodiest 
struggle between the Red and White Roses ; but the 
absorbing interest of the acres we were now travers- 
ing made one indisposed to listen to anything uncon- 
nected with the later contest. Close at hand, on the 
ridge to the left, a clump of trees marked the head- 
quarters of the Parliament, just in the rear of the 
army. The road we were following ran toward Tock- 
with, and marked the line where stood the troops of 
Fairfax. The farmer told of seeing skeletons disin- 
terred, and how fine and sound the teeth were ; evi- 
dently of men young and in their full strength. At 
last we turned from the highroad into a lane that 

1 Gardiner, Great Civil War, i. p. 449. 



1 644-] MARSTON MOOR. 225 

led into the Moor, — the very lane down which 
Fairfax had charged, running, without doubt, as it did 
then. The weather had been dry ; but the Moor was 
still so marshy that the hoofs of the stout farm-horse 
slumped in the black mire, and we jarred unsteadily 
on as now one wheel, now the other sank into a rut. 
From a quarter to a half mile of such progress, and 
turning to the left, we were presently on the brink of 
a deep ditch, the White Syke itself, and in the cen- 
tre of the field. The spot was plainly recognizable 
as that where the hardest fighting was done. Here 
Goring and Urry met Fairfax as he debouched upon 
the Moor, striking into ruin the slender column, as, 
after its compression between the hedges, it sought 
to deploy upon the more open ground. Right here, 
too, it was that Cromwell and David Leslie, after 
their stubborn breasting of Rupert's fire, charged 
home upon the backs of the Cavalier centre, at the 
very moment when with their pikes they were thrust- 
ing into rout the Scots of Leven. " Just here," said 
the old man, indicating with his hand a strip of plain 
before us, " many skeletons have been ploughed up." 
Now and then a cannon-ball appears ; and often bul- 
lets, the lead covered with a white corrosion from a 
burial of two centuries and a half in the damp soil. 
It was the place where the " White Coats " had died 
in their ranks as they had stood, shouting with their 
last breath for God and the King. 

All was substantially as on that fateful eve, except 
that hedges now divide the Moor more frequently 
than then. I looked across to where the spire of 
Tockwith rose among the trees at the distance of a 



2 26 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1644. 

mile. Pleasant green acres lay between, which in 
my fancy I peopled with a fierce confusion of clang- 
ing troopers, — long-locked Cavaliers, under a broad 
crimson banner, the sunset flashing on their corselets, 
swooping after the handsome prince in his cloak of 
scarlet, — clashing against them the torrent of Iron- 
sides, in their articulated steel, while Oliver, praying, 
entreating, shouting his war-cry, brandished in front 
of them his remorseless sabre. All lay, on the night 
of my visit, in the quietest peace. The deepening 
evening lent solemnity to the fields ; and to the shad- 
ows also of Wilstrop wood, close at hand, where the 
fugitives were cut to pieces, the trees of which, it is 
said, bore long in their hearts the Parliamentarian 
bullets. At the bottom of the White Syke, still good 
cover for resolute infantry and a dangerous obstacle 
to horse, ran a sullen black stream. How ghastly 
the stain with which that current had once been 
flushed ! I dismissed the cart and bade my guide 
good-night. The last load of hay for the day was 
going home out of the fertile field where the " White 
Coats " lay buried. I climbed over the White Syke as 
an old musketeer might have done, and as the twi- 
light grew deep, crossed the fields over which had 
advanced the King's left. Had his right advanced 
that evening to as good a purpose, Charles I would 
have regained his throne ! 



CHAPTER XI. 

NASEBY. 

At Marston Moor, although the success was great, 
the snake had merely been scotched, not killed. 
For a year longer the decision was doubtful. On 
the 2d of August, an entry in the " Commons Jour- 
nal " shows that Vane, quite worn out, was excused 
from his place " to go into the country for the recov- 
ery of his health, and to stay for a fortnight or there- 
abouts." In September, however, there was press- 
ing need of every good Parliament man, for on the 
1 st of the month the King brought the Earl of Es- 
sex to surrender in the Southwest, and toward the 
end from Scotland came most alarming news. Mont- 
rose, the most meteoric of heroes, suddenly blazed 
forth in the King's behalf, — with a handful of wild 
Irishmen and Highlanders still wilder than they, 
making light of all natural barriers of flood, precipice, 
or distance, mocking the valor of opposing armies, 
until victory seemed pledged to him. In these days 
there was much to dispirit the Scots who had come 
to England to help the Parliament. To their morti- 
fication, only the horse of David Leslie and two or 
three regiments of Leven's foot had gained much 
credit at Marston Moor ; they were in sore trouble 
over the thunderbolt about to fall upon their homes 



2 28 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1644. 

in their absence ; to crown all, their English friends 
were turning from them in a lamentable way. The 
tide of Independency was rising higher and higher, 
and Baillie is greatly afraid lest in the army " our 
silly, simple lads " may suffer from the infection. A 
few passages will make plain the situation. 

" September 16, 1644. 

" While Cromwell is here, the House of Com- 
mons, without the least advertisement to any of us, 
or of the Assembly, 1 passes an order that the grand 
Committee of both Houses, Assembly, and us, shall 
consider of the means to unite us and the Indepen- 
dents ; or, if that be found impossible, to see how 
they may be tolerated. This has much affected us. 
These men have retarded the Assembly these long 
12 mos. Our greatest friends, Sir Henry Vane and 
the Solicitor [St. John] are the main procurers of 
all this ; and that without any regard to us, who have 
saved their nation, and brought these two persons to 
the height of the power they enjoy, and use to our 
prejudice. We are on our ways with God and men, 
to redress all these things as we may. We had much 
need of your prayers. The great shot of Cromwell 
and Vane is to have a liberty of all religions, without 
any exceptions." 2 

" October, 1644. 

" We were here for some days under a cloud. The 
disasters lamentable in Scotland about St. Johnston 
and Aberdeen ; the prolongation of the siege of New- 
castle; the scattering of Essex's army in' the West; 

1 The Westminster Assembly of Divines. 2 Baillie, ii. 61 etc. 



1 644] NASEBY. 229 

Sir Harry Vane, our most entire friend, joining with 
a new faction to procure liberty for sects ; these and 
sundry other misaccidents, did much afflict us for a 
fortnight. . . . We have strange tugging with the 
Independents. . . . 

"... Sir Henry Vane, whom we trusted most, had 
given us many signs of his alteration ; twice at our 
table prolixly, earnestly, and passionately had rea- 
soned for a full liberty of conscience to all religions, 
without any exceptions ; had publicly, in the House, 
opposed the clause in the ordination that required 
ministers to subscribe the Covenant, and that which 
did intimate their being over their flocks in the Lord ; 
had moved the mustering of our army, as being far 
less than we were paid for ; had been offended with 
the Solicitor for putting in the ordinance the differ- 
ences about church government, and not only about 
free-grace, intruding liberty to the Antinomians, and 
to all sects ; he, without the least occasion on our 
side, did openly oppose us. Always God has helped 
us against him and them egregiously to this day. 
We were much in prayer and longing expectation 
that God would raise us from our lowness, near to 
contempt, and compesce their groundless insolency." 

The Scots honestly thought themselves badly 
treated. Just as honestly had the Independents on 
their side by no means intended to suppress liberty 
of conscience : the dying words of Vane are enough 
to establish that point. The language of the Solemn 
League and Covenant did not at all call for such a 
sacrifice as that. He was denounced as a cheat by 



23O YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1644. 

those who had been his friends. What other defence 
needs to be made for him than that he did not in the 
least forfeit the love and respect of the best men of 
his time, who also are among the purest men of all 
times ! Roger Williams, who now returns to Amer- 
ica, had lived as it were in his bosom and wore him 
in his heart of hearts ; and John Milton was not less 
fervent. 

Independency was in fact sweeping all before it. 
Though not in majority in Parliament, yet the Inde- 
pendents were so much the more able that they con- 
trolled all. Still more significant it appeared that 
the rising General Cromwell, his invincible Ironsides, 
and all the best soldiers, stood on the same side. The 
leaders who had so far appeared (and here perhaps a 
parallel may be seen to our own civil war) were fight- 
ing in gingerly fashion too often, not wanting to treat 
with too much severity enemies with whom in a few 
months they might effect an accommodation. Crom- 
well had already sent a thrill through their minds by 
roughly declaring, if he met the King in battle he 
would as soon fire his pistol at him as at any other 
man. In the misfortunes of Essex the Independents 
rejoiced, — possibly, so some think, 1 connived ; for 
though he was a brave and honorable soldier, it was 
felt that no substantial success could be achieved un- 
der him, and that it was well he should bring himself 
to disgrace. At length, at the time when Baillie was 
bemoaning the slighted Solemn League and Cov- 
enant, on the 27th of October was fought the second 
battle of Newbury, a fiercely contested field, where 

1 Guizot, English Revolution, 262. 



1 644.] NASEBY. 231 

victory was sadly balked for the Parliament by the 
sluggishness of Manchester. Cromwell, who now 
vibrated between the saddle and his seat in Parlia- 
ment, riding equally rough - shod in either place, 
broke out against his leader at St. Stephens. " Ever 
since Marston Moor he is afraid to conquer, afraid 
of a great and decisive success. But now, when the 
King was last near Newbury, nothing would have 
been more easy than entirely to destroy his army. I 
went to the General ; I showed him evidently how 
this could be done. I desired his leave to make the 
attack with my own brigade. Other officers urged 
with me ; but he obstinately refused, saying only, that 
if we were entirely to overthrow the King's army, the 
King would still be King and always have another 
army to keep up the war ; while we, if we were beaten, 
should no longer be anything but rebels and traitors 
executed and forfeited by the law." 1 

But a great change was preparing. The famous 
Baxter, though an enemy of the Independents, may 
perhaps here be quoted. 2 " Many honest and intelli- 
gent people indeed were now for new modelling the 
army, putting out the looser men and taking in those 
who were more strict and sober ; but Vane and 
Cromwell, joining together, outwitted and overreacht 
the rest, and carried on their own particular interest 
successfully." The method they took was by a 
" Self Denying Ordinance" Baxter continues : "Be- 
cause commands in the army had much pay, and Par- 
liament men should keep to the service of the House, 

1 Carlyle's Cromwell, i. 1 56. History of his Life atid Times, ii. 

2 Abridgment of Mr. Baxter's 53, 54. 



232 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1644. 

therefore no Parliament men should be members of 
the army." On the 9th of December, after a speech 
by Cromwell, in which a new step was hinted at, an 
obscure member of Parliament, Zouch Tate, moved 
" that no member of either House shall, during this 
war, enjoy or execute any office or command, civil or 
military, and that an ordinance be brought in accord- 
ingly." It was with design perhaps that an unknown 
man was selected to introduce so radical a measure, 
which might arouse in such a way a less decided op- 
position than if it originated with one of the chiefs, 
whose every move was sure to be combated. The 
proposed measure, by a shrewd indirection, was de- 
signed to shelve effectually the old Generals without 
giving offence. Vane seconded the motion of Tate, 
and in spite of a fierce debate, the Independents 
managed to carry it in the Commons. Precisely the 
course which matters took, it is difficult to follow. 
For some days the fate of the bill was in doubt, and 
on December 18 a solemn fast took place, when, to 
affect public sentiment, sermons were given at vari- 
ous points in London, and one at Westminster, at 
which both Houses were present. Immediately af- 
ter, Clarendon represents Vane in the Commons as 
making a speech as follows : 1 — 

" If ever God had appeared to them, it was in the ex- 
ercise of yesterday, and that it appeared, it proceeded 
from God, because (as he was credibly informed by 
many, who had been auditors in other congregations) 

1 Clarendon, iv. 1826 etc. God- Empire, iii. 552); but Vane must 

win doubts the value of Clarendon's have said something similar to 

report {Hist, of Commonw. i. 395) ; this, 
so too, Brodie {Hist, of British 



1 644-] NASEBY. 233 

the same lamentations and discourses had been made 
in all other churches, as the godly preachers had made 
before them ; which could therefore proceed only 
from the immediate spirit of God. He repeated some 
things which had been said, upon which he was best 
prepared to enlarge ; and besought them ' to remem- 
ber their obligations to God and to their country ; 
and that they would free themselves from those just 
reproaches ; which they could do no otherwise, than 
by divesting themselves of all offices and charges, 
that might bring in the least advantage and profit to 
themselves ; by which only they could make it ap- 
pear, that they were public-hearted men ; and as they 
paid all taxes and impositions with the rest of the na- 
tion, so they gave up all their time to their country's 
service, without any reward or gratuity.' He told 
them, ' that the reflections of yesterday, none of 
which had ever entered upon his spirit before, had 
raised another reflection in him than had been men- 
tioned ; which was, that it had often been taken no- 
tice of and objected by the King himself, that the 
numbers of the members of Parliament, who sat in 
either House, were too few to give reputation to 
acts of so great moment as were transacted in their 
counsels ; which, though it was no fault of theirs who 
kept their proper stations, but of those who had de- 
serted their places, and their trusts by being absent 
from the Parliament, yet that in truth, there were too 
many absent, though in the service of the House, 
and by their appointment ; and if all the members 
were obliged to attend the service of the Parliament, 
in the Parliament, it would bring great reputation 



234 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1644. 

to their numbers, and the people would pay more 
reverence, and yield a fuller obedience to their com- 
mands ; ' and then concluded, ' that he was ready to 
accuse himself for one of those who gained by an 
office he had ; and though he was possessed of it be- 
fore the beginning of the troubles, and owed it not 
to the favor of the Parliament (for he had been joined 
with Sir William Russell in the Treasurership of the 
Navy by the King's grant) yet he was ready to lay 
it down to be disposed of by the Parliament, and 
wished that the profits thereof might be applied to- 
wards the support of the war.' " 

Cromwell followed Vane in similar strain. On 
December 21, the vigor and genius of the Indepen- 
dents forced the Self Denying Ordinance through 
the Commons, but it was obstinately opposed by the 
Lords. Of the men whom it would have the effect 
to supersede, like Essex, Manchester, the Earl of 
Denbigh, another military leader, and the Earl of 
Warwick, commander of the fleet, a large proportion 
were Peers. The measure, in fact, if carried would 
deprive the diminished House of Lords of almost all 
power, and their resistance cannot be wondered at. 
In favor of peace, petitions were circulated : to these, 
counter petitions were opposed, which found more fa- 
vor with magistrates and influential men, " Sir Henry 
Vane having diligently provided that men of his own 
principles and inclinations should be brought into the 
government of the city ; of which he saw that they 
should always have great need, even- in order to keep 
the Parliament well bestowed." 1 In January, how- 

1 Clarendon, iv. 1824. 



i645-] NASEBY. 235 

ever, desperate over the situation, the peace party 
brought about a conference with Royalists at Ux- 
bridge, at which earnest efforts were made toward an 
accommodation. But the demands on both sides were 
most conflicting and violently pressed : bad temper 
increased : whatever tendency to yield the King had 
showed he suddenly suppressed. News had come of a 
great victory by Montrose in Scotland, and Charles, 
feeling that his skies were brightening, stiffened him- 
self against the rebels. The conference was broken 
off, and the Independents pushed their schemes with 
all possible tact and energy. The New Model 'was de- 
vised. 1 The old Generals being got rid of by the Self 
Denying Ordinance, the different forces were to be 
combined into one army, at the head of which was to 
be put the brilliant soldier who had done so well on 
many a field of the North, and who now was gashed 
by the wounds of Marston Moor, Sir Thomas Fair- 
fax. In the nick of time came now from Scotland 
the Marquis of Argyle, a man of vast influence in his 
nation, whom Vane had come to know well when at 
Edinburgh the year before. The two men were 
friends. Argyle, though Presbyterian, was less hide- 
bound than his fellows, and believed in a vigorous 
pushing of the war. His weight with the Scotch com- 
missioners was decisive. Early in April the struggle 
was over. The old Generals were set aside ; the 
armies were combined and reorganized. The Scots 
stood separate in the North, besieging Newcastle ; 
but in the Midlands, the New Model, under Fairfax, 
prepared to offer to the King a style of warfare which 
he had not yet known. 

1 Commons Journals ; Whitacre's Diary. 



236 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1645. 

The Lords had reason to feel that for them the 
hand was writing on the wall. Cromwell had curtly 
thundered, " There would never be a good time in 
England till we had done with the Lords," 1 and had 
told Manchester that it would not be well till he him- 
self " were but plain Mr. Montague." The Indepen- 
dents were for the most part from the People and 
threw themselves upon the People. Vane thus pre- 
sents matters at Guildhall to the city, on the 4th of 
March, when the New Model is in the air : — 

" My lord Mayor, worthy Aldermen, and you Gen- 
tlemen of the Common Council: the Houses of Par- 
liament have in all matters of importance thought fit 
to make this city, and particularly this Council here, 
privy to their actions, as having found, (to their great 
contentment) the usefulness of their affections to 
the public ; when they have so done, at this time, (as 
you have already heard) they have sent us to you for 
a double end : The one, to give you a clear represen- 
tation of the candor of their actions and intentions 
in this late treaty, — the other, the firmness and 
faithfulness of their resolutions to live and die with 
you and the rest of the Kingdom, in the prosecution 
of this war upon the opposers of peace, until it shall 
please God to give them the happiness of a safe and 
blessed peace, which now they think the only means 
left them is, by a vigorous prosecution of the war. 
.... That which they find most considerable at 
this time for them, and for the good of the Kingdom, 
and indeed of both Kingdoms, is, to make you as 
sensible of the necessity of all your assistance and 

1 Carlyle, i. 156. 



1 645-] NASEBY. 237 

helpfulness to put a speedy force into the field ; God 
hath gone before us in it already ; and truly in such 
a miraculous way, so unexpected, and so immediately 
by his own hand, that it is an encouragement in 
every heart that hears it, to be following God in this 
work. . . . These foundations being thus laid, of 
encouragement to the Houses, and we hope to your- 
selves, they are very desirous at this time for to see 
fresh demonstrations of your love and affection to 
them and to this cause, by using all the endeavors 
that lie in your power for an advance of a present 
sum of money, considering that they have forces, 
which they are now moulding and framing, which 
they hope to have in a very good posture, in case 
that they can have money to make them take the 
field. They have done the best that lies in their 
power for enabling these moneys to come in, in a 
seasonable time, but not so soon as it will be useful 
to the publique. ... If it pleased God that we can 
be but betimes in the field, we may be able to com- 
pose these unhappy differences amongst ourselves. 
Therefore, it is earnestly recommended to you, that 
in this great action that now may be for the saving 
of the Kingdoms, that you '11 be pleased to stretch 
forth your thoughts and endeavors." 1 

The Earl of Northumberland, and the Scotchman 
Loudon, spoke at the same time, but the decisive 
address was that of Vane. The city responded gen- 
erously to the appeal. On the 10th of March a re- 
port was made which insured the raising of the ne- 
cessary means " for the new army under Sir Thomas 

1 Thomasson Tracts, cclxxii. 



2 38 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1645. 

Fairfax," four citizens " offering £80,000 for its 
speedy advance." * 

The Self Denying Ordinance, as it passed the 
Lords at last, April 3d, was somewhat changed in 
form. All members of either House who had since 
November 20, 1640, been appointed to any offices, 
military or civil, should, at the end of forty days from 
the passing of the ordinance, vacate these offices, — 
a phrasing which we shall soon see led to important 
results. It is significant that the project of the New 
Model was made to originate in the Committee of 
Both Kingdoms, 2 where the influence of Vane was 
so powerful. A majority of the Scotch Commission- 
ers must have concurred, a thing very essential to 
its success, and this concurrence must have been 
brought about by Argyle. Just before, Montrose 
in Scotland had utterly discomfited Argyle, who was 
then at the head of an army, but his prestige seems 
to have been unaffected. One is forced to believe 
that he did not at all perceive the full bearing of the 
new measures, and that the terrible Sectaries, " all 
from New England," as Baillie writes, would make 
them a means for bringing themselves still higher. 
Argyle was a good Presbyterian, but he was drawn 
to Vane and believed in vigorous war. Both he and 
Vane were of a subtle spirit. Says one of Vane's 
most earnest panegyrists : 3 "A genuine frankness 
upon some very interesting and momentous occa- 
sions cannot be affirmed of either ; and we shall not 

1 London Post, Mar. 11 ; Mod- 3 Godwin, History of Common- 
erate Intelligencer, Mar. 6 to 13. wealth, i. 404. 

2 Whitacre's Diary. 



1 645.] NASEBY. 239 

be likely to be erroneous, if we assert of Vane, that 
he did not at this crisis disclose to his noble friend 
everything that was passing in his mind on the sub- 
ject." 

It certainly will not be inappropriate to leave 
Vane for a time at Westminster, while we follow the 
fortunes of the New Model which he had done so 
much to set upon its feet, fortunes which he in- 
deed to some extent guided, for the Committee of 
Both Kingdoms now made their authority felt in the 
field as never before. Cromwell was on the point 
of resigning his commission in accordance with the 
Self Denying Ordinance. A few days, however, re- 
mained of the forty days of grace which had been 
allowed, and on April 22 Fairfax was ordered by the 
Committee of Both Kingdoms to send Cromwell on 
an important expedition. In two days he had won 
two noteworthy victories, routing three regiments of 
Rupert's horse, and capturing an important fortress. 
Such an arm could not be spared. Fairfax de- 
manded him, and by special ordinance of the Com- 
mons, he was retained for forty days longer, becom- 
ing second in command. And now as the New 
Model stands on the brink of one of the most mem- 
orable battles of history, let us look at it somewhat 
more closely. 1 

As Cromwell was Lieutenant-General to Fairfax, 1 
so next in rank, as Major-General, stood the tough 
leader of the London train-bands, Skippon, — well- 

1 Authorities for Naseby : Sprigge, Anglia Rediviva ; Whitelocke, 
Memorials ; Rushworth ; Markham's Fair/ax, etc. 



24O YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1645. 

seasoned in war before his superior had ever drawn 
a blade, and a fighter of the stoutest ever since the 
Roundheads had been marshalled. Under these ap- 
peared, at the heads of regiments and troops, a crowd 
of forceful young officers, many of whom had risen 
from the ranks. Often they were of noble or gentle 
birth, like Colonel Algernon Sidney, Sir Robert Pye, 
brother-in-law of Hampden, and Montague, the brave 
boy of nineteen whom we saw on the brink of the 
White Syke ditch. Often, too, they were of humble 
origin. Pride was a foundling in a church-porch, and 
afterwards a drayman ; Hewson had been a cobbler; 
Watson, Scoutmaster- General, head of the intelli- 
gence department, a goldsmith of Lincoln ; Okey, 
major of the " cuirassiers," a tallow-chandler and Ana- 
baptist. Notice in particular one among these men 
— a captain thirty-six years old, once a gentleman- 
commoner, of Trinity College, Oxford, afterwards 
barrister of the Middle Temple, Henry Ireton. 

Whatever differences in rank might exist in the 
New Model, a religious tone, stern to fanaticism, per- 
vaded it throughout. At the word of command, the 
most rigid discipline prevailed, each man holding 
himself ready to go through fire and water at the 
bidding of his officer. Once dismissed, however, 
distinctions seemed forthwith to disappear. All was 
levelled to an equality, and the preacher in the tem- 
porary pulpit, on a cannon, or an ale-house bench, 
or a tomb in a church-yard, now praying, now lead- 
ing the psalm, now improving some bitter Apocalyp- 
tic text until the exhortation became rant, might be 
a common trooper, a colonel, or Cromwell himself : 



1 645.] NASEBY. 241 

if the preacher were but lively and painful, all else 
was overlooked. 

Few prophesied well of the New Model. The 
superseded Generals, whose swords henceforth were 
to rust in the scabbard, surveyed from their shelves, 
with great disgust, the changes, and felt certain of 
disaster. The King, to whom the Roundheads had 
now given the name " the man of blood," and his 
friends called the New Model the " New Noddle," 
and were sure that a single charge of Rupert would 
be enough to send flying the crop-eared, sanctimo- 
nious knaves who composed it. 

The opening events of the campaign of 1645 
heightened these hopes of the Malignants, and de- 
pressed correspondingly the Parliament. Montrose, 
dashing from the Highlands with his tattered, unin- 
telligible horde, transformed by his genius into a 
warlike instrument of consummate efficiency, utterly 
prostrated the Covenanters at Kilsyth, and the Scots 
at once retired northward. The King at the same 
time swept through the Midlands with a host light- 
hearted and enterprising, and on June 1st stormed 
successfully the important stronghold of Leicester. 
Powder, guns, provisions, and a capital point of van- 
tage were gained: of the large garrison that fell 
captive that day a certain humble private was des- 
tined to a wider and nobler fame than any man per- 
haps at that time in arms, not even excepting Crom- 
well, — the ex -tinker John Bunyan. The cheerful 
Kingr wrote to the Oueen that his affairs had never 
been in so good a position. As Fairfax, directed 
from Derby House by Vane's committee, marched 



242 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1645. 

northward, Charles came toward him in leisurely 
fashion, spending whole days in hunting. " If we 
peripatetics," he wrote to Oxford, his main headquar- 
ters, " get no more mischances than you Oxford- 
ians are like to have this summer, we may all expect 
a merry winter." As the New Model approached, 
the King retired, and Fairfax, reconnoitring during 
a dark rainy night, heard from close at hand the 
rumble of the wagons and tramp of the men, as the 
Malignants by their watch-fires broke camp and 
marched toward Pomfret. He was stopped on his 
return by one of his own sentries, and forgetting the 
pass-word was threatened with death if he advanced 
another step ; so he waited in the rain until the offi- 
cer of the guard appeared. On the 13th of June, 
Ireton, suddenly promoted at the request of Crom- 
well to be Commissary-General, surprised at midnight 
the King's rear -guard. That day, too, most fortu- 
nately, out of the eastern counties appeared Cromwell 
with the Ironsides, in full ranks and the finest heart. 

Following in the track of Fairfax as he sought 
the Cavaliers, the present writer rode through the 
rolling country, — now a tedious push of the tricycle 
up a steep pitch, then the exhilarating coast, from 
the crest into the hollow. The land gradually rose, 
until at length from a point six hundred feet above 
the sea-level rose a tall spire — Naseby, Navelsby, the 
centre of England. He passed between the rows of 
brick cottages that made up the village, and after 
dining at the inn with the beautiful horse-chestnut 
trees of the church-yard close by, turned northward, 
and was presently in a by-road between high haw- 



1645] NASEBY. 243 

thorn hedges. A steep incline carried the rider 
from the plateau into low ground, through which 
flowed a brook, a slope down which he rushed with 
his hand on the brake, with the air singing in his 
ears. In the low ground was a gate at the roadside, 
opening which he followed a cart-path to the Broad- 
Moor farm. In a great field rising gradually toward 
the Naseby spire, to his left, as he made his way 
rather painfully along the rough track, he saw the 
Broad-Moor farmer and his men, pitching into cocks 
ready for the wagon the heavy windrows of hay 
which the August sun had just thoroughly cured. 
He went to the group through the stubble on foot : 
and the strong farmer, leaning on his pitchfork, re- 
ceived him well. He now stood in the centre of the 
battlefield of Naseby, on the declivity of Mill Hill ; 
a mile northward, the ground rose from the low land 
in an answering ridge, Dust Hill ; beyond which 
still another could be seen, Sibbertoft ridge. The 
names are all as on the battle-day, and the appear- 
ance of things quite unchanged, except that, as at 
Marston Moor, what was then partially waste land is 
now thoroughly cultivated, and a few hedges divide 
what was then quite unenclosed. 

On the morning of June 14, 1645, Fairfax, march- 
ing out from Naseby, saw from Mill Hill the 
flashing pikes and waving pennons of the King, just 
coming in sight over Sibbertoft ridge to the north. 
The Cavaliers were no longer in the mood for retir- 
ing, and presently were marching over Dust Hill, 
scarcely a mile off. The drums and trumpets, even 
the voices of men, must have sounded clearly across 



244 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1645. 

the narrow valley, and Fairfax saw it was time to 
form his line. Withdrawing a furlong or so into a 
hollow behind Mill Hill, he made his dispositions. 
To the west, on his left flank, behind Sulby hedge, 
(the name and the hedge are still there) he put the 
Anabaptist major of cuirassiers, Okey, who led a 
force of excellent troops, dragoons, for the time being 
dismounted, but with the horses close by in charge 
of the odd man of each troop. We may imagine 
the stout " lobsters," in steel curiously jointed, with 
sharp antennas in the way of half-pike and sword- 
blade. Next to him, going eastward from the hedge, 
ran the left wing under Ireton, quondam scholar 
and lawyer, one of the best brains and bravest hearts 
in England, Cromwell's favorite, afterwards his son- 
in-law, for the first time in high command on that 
day, promoted from a captaincy over the heads of 
many older soldiers; the rapid advance, however, 
quite justified by his merit. In front of the centre 
was a " forlorn hope " of musketeers, arranged as 
skirmishers, behind whom stood five regiments of 
foot under the stout and genial old Skippon, grizzled 
from campaigns in the Low Countries, whose cheer- 
ful, honest shout to his men seems to peal heartily 
out of the long past time even now. " Come, my 
boys, my brave boys ! let us pray heartily and fight 
heartily ! I will run the same fortunes and hazards 
with you. Remember, the cause is for God, and 
for the defence of yourselves, your wives, and your 
children." Two of Skippon's colonels, in the front 
line, were the boys Pickering and Montague, beard- 
less veterans from Marston Moor. In the reserve, 



1 645-] NASEBY. 245 

Pride the drayman, and Hammond a gentleman 
and Oxford scholar, impetuous fighters both, stood 
shoulder to shoulder. The right wing, to the east, 
was formed of the Ironsides, 1 six regiments, of 
which Cromwell held two in reserve. It is worth 
while so far to particularize as to say that the one 
this day specially noticeable was led by Whalley, 
afterwards the regicide who fled for his life to New 
England, — the hero of one of the most familiar and 
picturesque of colonial traditions, — the saving of 
Hadley in the Connecticut valley from Indian attack 
near the time of King Philips war. The baggage 
was in the rear of Ireton, to the west of Naseby, 
guarded by a thin line of match-lock men, ranged 
round it in a circle. 

As to the King's array, against Ireton stood Ru- 
pert, his force in three brigades, one of them com- 
manded by his younger brother Maurice, just such 
another young hawk, but weaker in pinion and 
talon. Sir Jacob Astley led the centre, a fine type 
of the better Cavaliers, trained by the great Gusta- 
vus, his ardor not at all extinguished under his gray 
hairs, a sleepless, honorable captain, the same who 
made the trooper's honest prayer at Edgehill. The 
left wing was under Sir Marmaduke Langdale, a 
thin, serious Yorkshireman, full of enterprise, which, 
however, was tempered by judgment, — one of the 
King's best soldiers. He had, however, the draw- 
back of a hasty temper; and now as the armies were 
on the point of joining, high words were exchanged 

1 This name, given by Rupert to Cromwell, was extended to the sol- 
diers whom he commanded. 



246 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1645. 

between him and his subordinates, a want of union 
most ill-timed, when the points that glinted on the 
hillside opposite were those of the Ironsides. His 
command, the northern horse, it is said, had wished 
to march northward, and were on the point of mu- 
tiny because prevented. 1 The forces were in number 
scarcely half as large as those engaged at Marston 
Moor; on both sides, however, the troops were bet- 
ter, and led with the finest courage. 

So the armies stood in the middle of that beauti- 
ful June forenoon, solid English masses on both sides, 
scarcely distinguishable except that the Cavaliers 
wore in their hats a green sprig, and the Roundheads 
a badge of white. The Puritan ensign is said to 
have displayed five Bibles upon a ground of black : 
the standards of their opponents were of course far 
gayer and more numerous. At the centre burned 
the crimson banner of the King embroidered in gold 
with a crown and lion. One troop bore the streamer 
of the Queen, of white silk, while another displayed 
a flag of flowered damask. On the right wing flew 
a sky blue color, that of Rupert, who in this way 
replaced the one lost the year before at Marston 
Moor. 

As the writer read on the field the story of the 
battle, which he had brought with him, he could 
trace narrowly the position of the two lines. Prince 
Rupert's lodge, an old farm-building which tradition 
makes to have been his temporary head-quarters, was 
half a mile off on the opposite rise. Down the gentle 
descent before it one could follow with the eye the 

1 S. R. Gardiner, in a private letter to the author. 




The Kwofc Kvrrv\j 



1 645-] NASEBY. 247 

track of his horsemen, when, thinking Fairfax was 
retreating as he withdrew behind the Mill Hill to 
form, the Prince rode impetuously forward, breaking 
the King's line. Just here to the right it was that 
Charles, that day every inch a King, in complete ar- 
mor, with fine horsemanship, galloped along his front. 
" Soldiers, will you fight for me ? " he called. " All — 
all ! " was the enthusiastic cry, mixed with shouts of 
" Queen Mary ! " the battle cry, as the solemn ranks 
of Fairfax, amid their prayers and psalms, shouted, 
" God with us ! " 

It was between ten and eleven that Fairfax, at 
length thoroughly ready, reappeared upon Mill Hill 
in sight of Rupert, who had paused in the hollow for 
the remainder of the line to come up. The cannon- 
ade that had preceded the close grapple at Marston 
Moor had been found to produce small effect ; this 
day there was little booming of heavy guns on either 
side. Rupert came on at once with all his extraor- 
dinary gallantry, and the ranks of Ireton rushed to 
meet him with a shout. As the mad tide of Cava- 
liers swept with a heavy thunder of hoofs along Sulby 
hedge, the dragoons in ambush among the hawthorn 
poured in a heavy flanking fire, which, however, the 
horsemen little minded. Okey declared afterward 
that he saw, as he peered through the leaves, the 
King himself, at the head of a troop in the second 
line, bearing himself most valiantly. The contest 
lasted but a few minutes. The Roundheads gave way, 
the colonels struggling desperately to hold their men 
as they were mercilessly overridden and sabred. The 
dragoons alone behind the hedge were cool and un- 



248 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1645. 

yielding, the steady barrels pouring a side fire upon 
the melee, the horses close at hand, to be mounted 
on the instant when a fit time should come. They 
gave themselves up for lost, however, when the Cava- 
lier blades flashing as they turned in the sun, and 
the rearing chargers, passed rapidly southward, driv- 
ing before them the rout of fugitives. But, as al- 
ways, Rupert went too fast and too far, drawing rein 
first at the baggage-train beyond Naseby. An eye- 
witness who sat there within the circle of match- 
lock men has given a vivid picture of the riding up 
of the troopers, the Prince in front in a red Spanish 
cap. The commander of the baggage train, suppos- 
ing him to be Fairfax, asked him, hat in hand, how 
the battle was ooinor. He was asked in turn if he 
would have quarter, whereat the musketeers trained 
their sights upon the intruders, who straightway 
turned back. 

How fared it elsewhere, meanwhile ? Sir Marma- 
duke Langdale, as brave as Rupert, had spurred with 
his troopers against the Roundhead right ; but Crom- 
well launched at them the regiment of Whalley, who 
met them in full career, and again were the Malig- 
nants given as stubble to the swords of the Ironsides. 
The ground was here difficult for the horse of the 
Parliament, but they broke through everything, till 
the scene on the west was repeated on the east with 
the parties reversed, except that Cromwell never went 
too fast and too far. 

At the centre, the foot stood till close upon noon 
in the fiercest conflict, — mutual volleys, then a rush- 
ing forward into push of pike and clubbing of mus- 



1 645-] NASEBY. 249 

kets. Gray Sir Jacob Astley holds the King's men 
sternly to their work, till the Parliamentary line wav- 
ers and gives ground. Skippon, while bringing up 
Pride with the reserves, finds his armor broken and 
his side pierced by a bullet, but he shouts that " he 
will not stir so long as a man shall stand." Pride 
drives ruthlessly against the advancing line. Ireton 
from the left, rallying a party of his routed men, 
smites in upon the flank, hip and thigh : his horse is 
shot, his leg pierced with a pike ; a halbert thrust 
gores his face in ghastly fashion. Thus maimed and 
blood-stained, he is taken prisoner. Watchful Okey 
now, his dragoons in an instant mounting, forsakes 
his hedge, gallops across the vacant position of the 
King's right, and repeats the blow. Fairfax, too, 
dashes in with his life-guard from the east ; and soon 
Cromwell, having trampled out Sir Marmaduke, is 
upon the rear with the terrible Ironsides. Under the 
hot noon sun the death - grapple goes on till the 
Roundheads beat everything to the earth before them. 
Astley, unhelmed, makes his way with difficulty from 
among the hoofs of the horses, and the war-cry 
" Queen Mary," becomes a cry for quarter. Only 
Loughborough's blue regiment stands like the White 
Coats in the White Syke Close. Fairfax's life-guard 
charge them twice in vain. Struck in front and 
rear simultaneously, they melt before the smiting 
arms, disdaining to be spared, until the Roundheads 
meet in the centre, Fairfax himself seizins: their en- 
sign and slaying its bearer. 

Now, Rupert, returning at a leisurely pace, draws 
up upon Mill Hill, and casts a glance over the battle 



250 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1645. 

which he has supposed was gained. The horses are 
blown and the ardor of his men relaxed. He might 
have come to the help of the routed centre ; but as 
he passes downward, suddenly out of the battle-smoke 
a troop of Ironsides charges his flank, and all is con- 
fusion. " Face about once more," cries Charles to 
his reserve. " Give one charge more and recover the 
day ! " At the same time he sets spurs to his horse 
and is in the act of dashing forward. The troops 
are fresh and might possibly have accomplished 
something: but the Earl of Carnewarth, a timid 
Scotch courtier, suddenly lays hand upon the King's 
bridle : " Will you go upon your death in an in- 
stant ? " he says. Before Charles can prevent, his 
horse swerves, and word runs through the troops 
that they are to wheel to the right. The unfortu- 
nate King seems to set an example of flight : a sud- 
den panic seizes all, and a mad rout tears northward. 
The implacable squadrons of Cromwell are at once 
upon them, and the roads are strewn with slaugh- 
tered fugitives. — What frenzy of the war-horse ! 
what fierce exulting of the fanatic rider, shouting the 
war-cries of Gideon and Joshua, his weapon heavy as 
a weavers beam! How the long -locks are sweat 
through and dishevelled — the fine scarfs and em- 
broidery rent and blood-stained in the death agony 
of that long summer afternoon ! 

"Fools, your doublets shone with gold, and your hearts were gay and 
bold, 

When you kissed your lily hands to your lemans to-day ; 
And to-morrow shall the fox, from her chamber in the rocks, 

Lead forth her tawny cubs to howl above the prey. 



1645] ' NASEBY. 25 I 

" Where be your tongues that late mocked at heaven and hell and fate, 
And the fingers that once were so busy with your blades, 

Your perfumed satin clothes, your catches and your oaths, 

Your stage-plays and your sonnets, your diamonds and your spades ? 

" Down, clown, forever down with the mitre and the crown, 
With the Belial of the court, and the Mammon of the Pope. 

There is woe in Oxford halls : there is wail in Durham's stalls : 
The Jesuit smites his bosom : the Bishop rends his cope. 

"And she of the seven hills shall mourn her children's ills, 
And tremble when she thinks on the edge of England's sword; 

And the Kings of earth in fear shall shudder when they hear 

What the hand of God hath wrought for the Houses and the 
Word ! " » 

The King drew rein first about thirty miles from 
the field : his power was utterly broken : thenceforth, 
says a Cavalier writer, " like a wounded partridge," 
he only flitted from one castle to another. His army 
was in great part slain, and of those left, who shall tell 
how many bore to the grave the scar of Roundhead 
lance and bullet ! There was booty of fifty-five col- 
ors and all the cannon, — of baggage heavy with the 
plunder of Leicester. Here was found the King's 
private correspondence. The knightly Fairfax re- 
fused to look at it ; he had refused, just before the 
battle, to read a letter from Goring to Charles, which 
had been intercepted. Judged by the usages of war, 
he was quite too punctilious, but how finely honora- 
ble ! A Parliamentary committee, in spite of the 
General's opposition, read the letters, and found them 
full of evidence of the King's duplicity. They were 
made public, and may still be read in the old collec- 
tions. 2 The hearts of the people became steeled 
against a prince whose soul was full of treachery. 

1 Macaulay's " Naseby." 2 Harleian Miscellany, vol. v. 



252 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1645. 

I had brought the tale of the battle with me, and 
had it at hand as I stood talking with the Broad Moor 
farmer there, two hundred and forty years afterward, 
upon the ground held by the Roundhead centre. 
The farmer leaned on his fork ; the horses caught 
from the windrow a few mouthfuls of hay, as the 
transatlantic stranger was entertained. Here Astley 
had advanced with his levelled pikes, as the Round- 
heads gave ground. Just here it must have been 
that Skippon staggered : from the thorns back there 
Pride must have come with his succor. I saw that 
when I came down the hill with a rush, the air sing- 
ing in my ears, I was precisely in the track of the Iron- 
sides when they flung themselves upon Sir Marma- 
duke. One of the laborers came forward with two 
corroded bullets in his palm. He showed me where 
he found them on the ground of the Roundhead 
right. I bought them for a shilling. They whistled 
once in Cromwell's hearing. Did they, perhaps, 
come from the pistol of Rupert ? To-night they are 
my paper-weights, at all events. Bidding the farmer 
good-bye, I pushed with some difficulty, clear across 
the field through the stubble to the western verge. 
A boy who guided me pointed out three or four de- 
pressions on the declivity of Mill Hill, still traceable, 
and with a rank growth of weeds about. They were 
the pits in which had been buried the slain men and 
horses. The officers were buried under the spire of 
Naseby church. A gate let me through Sulby hedge 
to the high-road. From the ambush of the dragoons 
here I took my last look in the light of the late after- 
noon, peering like those bronzed and moustached 



1 645.] NASEBY. 253 

warriors in their steel caps, through the interstices in 
the hawthorn. That sod had been dinted by the 
hoofs of Rupert's war-horse and drunk the blood of 
Ireton. All lay in deepest peace. No spears glinted 
over Sibbertoft ridge ; — a heavy load of hay was 
passing through the field where the poltroon hand 
balked that last charge of Charles which might have 
brought him to an honorable death. How narrow 
for the Roundheads was the chance of victory ! For 
three hours it was a most doubtful fight. Defeat 
would have been utter destruction for them ; the In- 
dependents were in the minority ; the rest of the na- 
tion were about ready to overlook all and restore the 
King. Victory for the Cavaliers would have been 
the death of freedom in England, and not in Eng- 
land alone. I remember the Broad-moor farmer told 
me the fork on which he leaned was of American 
make, and I believe the grass had been mowed by an 
American machine. America has reaped another 
harvest from the field of Naseby. Of the slain at 
Naseby it may be truly said : " They died that gov- 
ernment of the People, by the People, and for the 
People might not perish from the earth." From a 
distant hill I caught a last glance of the Naseby spire 
rising above the dust of the dead fighters. Naseby 
the centre of England ! In the whole history of the 
English-speaking race, few events are more central 
than Naseby battle ! 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE RISE OF THE INDEPENDENTS. 

After Naseby it was short work for the New 
Model to beat down the opposition of the King. 
He tried to make head against his adverse fate, rally- 
ing his beaten forces, intriguing for reinforcements 
of Papists from Ireland, and Catholic mercenaries 
from the continent, and striving hard to join hands 
with Montrose in Scotland, who by the brilliant vic- 
tory at Kilsyth seemed to have subdued the Low- 
lands as he had before done the Highlands. The 
King's luck, however, had gone. The reading of his 
letters captured at Naseby, to the London citizens 
at Guildhall, made plain to the nation his perfidy, 
farther proof of which appeared as the fall advanced. 
David Leslie, the best soldier of the Covenanters, 
hurrying northward with the Scottish horse, on Sep- 
tember 13th, caught napping the lithe panther him- 
self; Montrose was annihilated at Philiphaugh. One 
by one the scattered Royalist bands were tracked 
and beaten, and on March 22, 1646, the' last tough 
remnant that still held out was broken to pieces. It 
was a band under the stiff old trooper Sir Jacob 
Astley, the same who made the naive prayer at 
Edgehill, and so nearly brought Skippon to grief at 
Naseby. Says an old account : " Sir Jacob Astley, 



1 645.] THE RISE OF THE INDEPENDENTS. 255 

being taken captive and wearied in the fight, and be- 
ing antient (for old age's silvery hairs had quite cov- 
ered over his head and beard) the soldiers brought 
him a drum to sit and rest himself upon ; who, being 
seated, he said (as I was most credibly informed) 
unto our soldiers : ' Gentlemen, ye may now sit down 
and play, for you have done all your work, if you fall 
not out among yourselves.' " 1 

But what all this time of American ideas ? The 
story we are trying to follow has but a far away in- 
terest for us except as it can be made clear that 
these strivers were brothers of our own. We have 
traced the coming up of the Independents : their 
own generation believed that they drew their origin 
from America ; as has been seen the idea is not 
without reason. Roger Williams, in close commun- 
ion with Vane, scheming through the cold winter of 
1643-4 to help the London poor to fuel in the dearth 
which the war had caused, thinking out and publish- 
ing the " Bloudy Tenent," had gone back to his 
forest home on Narragansett Bay. We have seen 
what downright blows the Independents had for 
Rupert and old Sir Jacob; how cleverly they man- 
aged to set aside the respectable but slow-going mil- 
itary chiefs who desired to have the cannon roar 
with something of the softness of the sucking dove, 
that no very serious harm might be done to their 
friends, just now unhappily estranged but next year 
probably to be reconciled. For the time being now 
all was in Independent hands, and elections being 

1 Old Parliamentary History, under date. 



256 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1645. 

ordered to fill the places in Parliament made vacant 
by those who had gone over to the King, in the 
course of a few months two hundred and thirty-five 
new members, " Recruiters " they were called, ap- 
peared at Westminster, a large part of whom w r ere 
Independents. It was especially fortunate for these, 
that among the " Recruiters " came the vigorous 
soldiers who had cut their way to fame, Fairfax, 
Skippon, Ireton, Ludlow, Blake, noted now for the 
brave defence of Taunton and whom we shall know 
well hereafter, Algernon Sidney, the pure-minded 
Colonel Hutchinson whose " Memoirs" by his wife is 
such a well-known book, a high-hearted hero named 
Thomas Scott, and Fleetwood, a future son-in-law of 
Cromwell. One hears little henceforth of the Self 
Denying Ordinance. The idea of taking Oliver 
from the head of the Ironsides was not to be thought 
of. The measure had served its purpose, and in the 
quiet to which all now looked forward, it was al- 
lowed to pass that spurred and sworded men dis- 
mounted from their war-horses to sit on the benches 
at St. Stephens. 

Still the Presbyterians were by no means prostrate : 
though disconcerted at the prosperity of the secta- 
ries, Denzil Holies, Glyn, Maynard, Stapleton, and 
many another, with the Scotch Commissioners, 
blocked as they could the innovating spirit, and ever 
and again, as the balance shifted in the uncertain 
times, came uppermost. Most picturesque and bitter 
among these anti-tolerationists was William Prynne, 

" That grand scripturient paper-spiller, 
That endless, needless margin-filler, 
So strangely tossed from post to pillar," 



I645-] THE RISE OF THE INDEPENDENTS. 257 

whom the reader will find most graphically hit off by 
Masson. 1 For his dontumacy, he had been under 
Laud shockingly mutilated on the pillory, and he was 
worn with imprisonment. There was something pre- 
ternatural in his vitality and industry — " a ghoul-like 
creature with a scarred and mutilated face, his twice 
cropped ears hidden under a woolen cowl or night-cap, 
lonely among his books and papers at Lincoln's Inn, 
having no regular meals, but now and then munch- 
ing bread and taking ale." He had already written 
fifty-five books and pamphlets toward the two hun- 
dred " that were to form the long ink-track of his 
total life." 

Of the different shades of belief which the anti- 
tolerationists had now to combat, Edwards, 2 one of 
their number, enumerates as many as one hundred 
and seventy-six. Nothing could be wilder than some 
of these notions, and it is curious to see how much 
modern speculation was anticipated in the vagaries. 
Not a note in the gamut of possible beliefs which 
some harsh exhorter did not strike ! They possessed 
among themselves scarcely any common ground but 
liberty of conscience. Among these sectaries, the 
most untamable was a certain John Lilburne, a come- 
outer so utterly pugnacious, that, as Henry Marten 
said, " if only John Lilburne were left in the world, 
then John would quarrel with Lilburne and Lilburne 
with John." Desperately honest and earnest, utterly 
impracticable, heroically intrepid, obstinate to the 
last degree, his almost unceasing vociferations through 

1 Life of Milton, iii. 140. 

2 Gangraena, Thomasson Tracts, ccxlvii. 



258 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1645. 

the whole time of the Civil War are discord thrice 
over among all the discord. When scarcely more 
than a boy he had been whipped at the cart's tail, by 
command of the Star Chamber, then pilloried. While 
on the pillory he had harangued and distributed 
tracts until gagged and bound ; then he stamped with 
his feet. His brother became later one of Cromwell's 
famous officers : still another brother had died on the 
field among the Ironsides : John himself had fought 
his way up to be lieutenant-colonel of dragoons at 
Marston Moor, where he was very brave. Cromwell 
urged him to take a command in the New Model, 
but he preferred a position outside of everything, a 
sleepless, implacable fanatic. We shall see him as 
contumacious before Cromwell as he had been before 
Laud. 

Doubtless the Independents had many misgiv- 
ings, as this multitude of discordant fancies, some- 
times so uncouth and repulsive, came floating up to 
the surface of the disturbed time, as Toleration be- 
gan to have sway. How could society exist, if such 
an Antinomian menagerie were allowed to bellow 
and cavort according to its own wild will ? Doubt- 
less they took anxious council together at the house 
of Vane in Charing Cross, the meeting-place of the 
wiser men among these free souls, and it is impos- 
sible not to believe that the gentle-spirited, heroic 
apostle from New England had not laid before them 
that solution of the embarrassment which he after- 
wards gave in the beautiful letter to his own town of 
Providence. " There goes many a ship to sea, with 
many hundred souls in one ship, whose weal and 



1 645.] THE RISE OF THE INDEPENDENTS. 259 

woe is common, and is a true picture of a common- 
wealth or a human cdmbination and society. It hath 
fallen out sometimes that both Papists and Protes- 
tants, Jews and Turks, may be embarked in one ship; 
upon which supposal I affirm, that all the liberty of 
conscience that ever I pleaded for, turns upon these 
two hinges — that none of the Papists, Protestants, 
Jews, or Turks, be forced to come to the ship's pray- 
ers or worship, nor compelled from their own partic- 
ular prayers or worship, if they practice any. I 
further add that I never denied that notwithstanding 
this liberty, the commander of this ship ought to 
command the ship's course ; yea, and also command 
that justice, peace, and sobriety, be kept and prac- 
tised, both among the seamen and all the passengers. 
If any of the seamen refuse to perform their services, 
or passengers to pay their freight ; if any refuse to 
help, in person or purse, towards the common 
charges or defence ; if any refuse to obey the com- 
mon laws and orders of the ship, concerning their 
common peace or preservation ; if any shall mutiny 
and rise up against their commanders and officers ; 
if any should preach or write that there ought to be 
no commanders or officers, because all are equal in 
Christ, therefore no masters nor officers, no laws nor 
orders, nor corrections, nor punishments ; — I say, 
I never denied, but in such cases, whatever is pre- 
tended, the commander or commanders may judge, 
resist, compel, and punish such transgressors accord- 
ing to their deserts and merits. This, if seriously 
and honestly minded, may, if it so please the Father 
of Lights, let in some light to such as willingly shut 



26o YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1645. 

not their eyes. I remain, studious of your common 
peace and liberty, Roger Williams." ! Though crop- 
eared Prynne and his party battled, the air was now 
full of the spirit of Toleration. The ancient Puritan- 
ism felt that the robe which should be seamless was 
about to be rent into a thousand fragments, each 
little knot of sectaries to set up who could tell what 
soul-kill insr extravagances of creed. 

If Independency was an American idea, side by 
side with it we now begin to observe others, as char- 
acteristically American. While Charles after Naseby, 
the weapons struck from his hands, sought to play 
a shrewd game between the two parties into which 
his opponents had become split, paltering with each 
in a double sense, now professing friendship for one, 
now for the other, and at the same time intriguing 
east and west for new means and new forces to make 
head against them both, the rank and file of those 
extraordinary Ironsides were beginning to ask : 
" Why dally with this King ? Why have a King at 
all, unless some one by election ? Why have an es- 
tablished church ? We have determined to let each 
conscience choose a faith for itself. Why tolerate 
the privileged class of nobles ? Let each man 
stand according to his own deserts. What but this 
is the true polity, — an assembly made up of repre- 
sentatives chosen by the untrammelled votes of all 
the reputable men of the land, — government of the 
People, by the People, for the People ? " 

Not yet was there any public expression of such 

1 To the Town of Providence, Jan., 1655. Narragansett Club Pub- 
lic, vii. 278, etc. 



1 645.] THE RISE OF THE INDEPENDENTS. 26 1 

extreme ideas, but in their camps, as rumors came 
now of their being sent to unwelcome service in Ire- 
land, now of disbandment without satisfactory assur- 
ance that a suitable accommodation could be made, 
now of the unlikelihood oi receiving arrears of pay, 
there was much serious talk among those grave men. 
Sitting on drums by camp-fires in the cool fall 
nights, binding up the cuts from the swords of the 
men of Rupert and Sir Marmaduke, giving rest to 
feet blistered in marching after Hop ton and Sir 
Jacob Astley, — in the respite from arms there was 
leisure for counsel, and what the outcome was to be 
was ere long revealed. 

Our garrulous friend Baillie before Naseby is full 
of depreciation of the New Model, and just after by 
no means in a happy frame of mind. June 17, "I 
have myself been much fashed in my own mind." 
He has said something about a tampering with the 
King by the Independents, and, " some of the Inde- 
pendents hearing of it presently complain to the 
Committee of Both Kingdoms. Harry Vane and 
the Solicitor exaggerate the matter and report it to 
the House of Commons." News from Naseby hav- 
ing arrived, " we hope the back of the Malignant 
party is broken. Some fear the insolency of others, 
to whom alone the Lord has given the victory of that 
day, . . . the Independent party, albeit their number 
in Parliament be very small, yet being prime men, 
active and diligent, and making it their great work 
to retard all till they be first secured of a toleration 
of their separate congregations, etc." 1 Still later, 

1 Letters, ii. pp. no, 117, 183. 



262 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1645. 

when Baillie has returned to Edinburgh, 1 he de- 
scribes the high and bold design of the sectaries, 
which they follow drawn on by the course of affairs 
and the light heads of their leaders. " Vane and 
Cromwell, as I take it, are of nimble hot fancies for 
to put all in confusion, but not of any deep reach. 
St. John and Pierpont are more stayed, but not great 
heads. Say and his son 2 albeit wiser, yet of so dull, 
sour, and fearful temperament, that no great achieve- 
ment in reason could be expected of them. The 
rest, either in the Army or Parliament, are not on 
their mysteries, and of no great parts, either for 
counsel or action so far as I could ever observe." 
These fellows, however, continues Baillie, are " abso- 
lute masters of all." 

How much was won by boldness and how much 
by indirection in these days, it is impossible to say. 
Baxter declares 3 that " Vane and Cromwell used the 
Army to model the Parliament," and with deep cun- 
ning stirred up the House to pass offensive votes, 
that the Army might become enraged. Such evi- 
dence counts for little, but that the Independents 
could be very devious, their best friends are forced 
to admit. In November, a curious episode of the 
session was the creation of Peers, four Dukes, two 
Marquises, five Earls, four Barons, and one Viscount, 
— creations which the King was to confirm, in case 
peace was made. Among the Barons was old Sir 
Harry Vane. The Independents, thinks Godwin, 4 

1 ii. 258-9. Parliamentarian, known as "Young 

2 Nathaniel Fiennes, a failure Subtlety." 
as a soldier, witness his surrender 8 Life, 54. 
of Bristol, in 1643, but a shrewd 4 ii. 87, etc. 



i645-] THE RISE OF THE INDEPENDENTS. 263 

certainly managed this, and what can have been the 
motive ? The great majority of those thus honored 
were Presbyterians, only five being from their own 
party. Was it a trap for their adversaries ? " There 
was a great deal of deep and indirect policy in the 
Independent leaders," and Godwin conjectures that 
the design was to throw discord into the camp of the 
opposition by raising some above others. Those 
not honored would be jealous of those who were. 
A few names from their own number were in- 
cluded that the other side might be blinded. One 
can only speculate upon what was intended by this 
strange move at this time on the part of these men 
who in a very short space were to stand forth as 
the opponents of all privilege. Peace with Charles 
never came, so the creations could never be con- 
firmed. 

With the King it was fox against fox. Too crip- 
pled to fight, while he intrigued abroad and in Ire- 
land, he approached also the Presbyterians ; and 
while he dealt with them, he sought, as he had done 
when his affairs were less desperate, to touch hands, 
through Vane, with the Independents. Two letters 
are preserved written to Vane by order of Charles. 1 

Sir Edward Nicholas to Sir Henry Vane the Younger. 

" You cannot suppose the work is donn, though 
God should suffer you to destroy the K : the mis- 
eryes which will inevitably follow are soe plaine in 
view, that it is more than necessary some speedy 

1 Evelyn's Memoirs, Bray's ed. v. p. 158. Clarendon, State Papers, 
ii. 226, 227. 



264 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1646. 

expedient be found for their prevention." He thinks 
Spain and France will combine against England. 
" The only remedye is . . . that the K. may come to 
London upon the termes he hath offered ; where if 
Presbytery shall be soe strongly insisted upon as that 
there can be noe peace without itt, you shall certainly 
have all the power my master cann make to joyne 
with you in rooting out of this kingdome that tyran- 
nicall government ; with this condition, that my mas- 
ter may not have his conscience disturbed (yours be- 
ing free) when that easy work is finished. . . . Waigh 
it sadly." [At bottom] " This a trew Coppie of what 
was sent to Sir Hen. Vane the Younger by my com- 
and. C. R. Mar. 2, 1646." 

A second letter enforces the first, the King in his 
earnestness speaking for himself. 

" By all that is good, I conjure you to dispatch that 
curtoysye for me with all speed or it will be too late, 
I shall perish before I receive the fruits of it. I may 
not tell you my necessities, but if it were necessary 
soe to doe, I am sure you would lay all other consid- 
erations aside, and fulfill my desires." [At bottom] 
" This a true Copie of what was sent by Jack Ashe- 
burnham and my comand, to Sir Henry Vane the 
Younger. C. R." [undated.] 

" Gentlemen, you have done your work and may 
now go play, unless you fall out among yourselves." 
Astley, sitting on the drum, chatting good-naturedly 
with the Roundheads who had just made him pris- 



1646.] THE RISE OF THE INDEPENDENTS. 265 

oner, as he wiped the sweat of the battle from his 
face, his white head, unhelmeted, receiving the cool 
breeze, had struck right at the weakness of his ene- 
mies. More and more they were falling out among 
themselves, and Charles, finding the sword utterly- 
beaten from his hands, trusting so to his shrewdness, 
and yet always overreaching himself instead of his 
enemies, concluded to put himself into their hands, 
believing he could play among them, as a prisoner, a 
cunning game for his own advantage. He forsook 
Oxford April 27, so often gay even in the war-time 
with Cavalier riot, and in a few davs came riding into 
the ranks of the grim Scotch Covenanters, as they lay 
on their arms in the North. He brought to bear 
upon them the personal charm he could always ex- 
ercise, — was affable with old Leven, and discussed 
gravely and ably with Henderson the questions of 
the Church. The Scots besought him to sign, or 
at least to acknowledge the Covenant, without which 
they could not admit him beyond the border. But 
he was faithful to his Anglicanism ; though they 
were embarrassed, he felt easy in his situation. In 
the eyes of all parties a glamour surrounded him, as 
he knew; and evenly balanced as they were, he felt 
sure that by casting his weight at the proper time 
with one, that must straightway become paramount, 
bringing him at the same time happily to enjoy his 
own again. 

The Scots could do nothing with him. There was 
no reason why they should stay longer in England. 
Skippon with a strong detachment conducted to 
their camp a convoy of thirty-six creaking wagons, 



266 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1647. 

containing a million dollars, half of the subsidy in 
cash which was due them, and they joyfully marched 
home, January, 1647, with pockets jingling in a man- 
ner rare enough to Scotchmen of those days. The 
King was surrendered to Parliament, and all now 
looking toward peace, the Presbyterians were upper- 
most, discredit falling upon the Army and its favor- 
ers. Many of the Recruiters, who at first had acted 
with the Independents, inclined now to their oppo- 
nents. The Presbyterians, feeling that none would 
dare to question the authority of Parliament, pushed 
energetically their policy as regards the Army, of 
sending to Ireland, disbanding, neglecting the pay- 
ment of arrears, and displacing the old officers. But 
suddenly there came for them a rude awakening. On 
April 30, 1647, Skippon, whom all liked, whom the 
Presbyterians indeed claimed, but who at the same 
time kept on good terms with the Army and Inde- 
pendents, rose in his place in St. Stephens and pro- 
duced a letter, brought to him the day before by 
three private soldiers, in which eight regiments of 
horse expressly refused to serve in Ireland, declaring 
that it was a perfidious design to separate the sol- 
diers from the officers whom they loved, — framed by 
men who, having tasted of power, were degenerat- 
ing into tyrants. Holies and the Presbyterians were 
thunder-struck, and laying aside all other business 
summoned the three soldiers to appear at once. 
They came without delay and without fear, giving 
their names as Edward Sexby, William Allen, and 
Thomas Sheppard. "Where was this letter got 
up ? " inquired the Speaker. " At a meeting of the 



1 647.] THE RISE OF THE INDEPENDENTS. 267 

regiments." " Who wrote it ? " " A council of del- 
egates appointed by each regiment." " Did your offi- 
cers approve of it ? " " Very few of them knew any- 
thing about it." " Do you know that none but Roy- 
alists could have suggested such a proceeding ? You 
yourselves, were you ever Cavaliers ? " " We entered 
the service of Parliament before the battle of Edge- 
hill, and have remained in it ever since." One of the 
three stepped forward : " I received once five wounds ; 
I had fallen ; Major-General Skippon saw me on the 
ground, and gave me five shillings to get relief. He 
can contradict me if I lie." " It is true," said Skip- 
pon, looking with interest at the soldier. " We are 
only the agents of our regiments : if the House will 
give us its questions in writing, we will take them to 
the regiments and bring back the answers. 1 ' 1 

A violent tumult arose in the House. The Pres- 
byterians declared that the three sturdy Ironsides 
standing there, with their buff stained from their 
corselets, ought to be at once committed ; to which it 
was answered, that if there were to be commitment, 
it should be to the best London tavern, and sack and 
sugar provided. Cromwell, leaning over toward Lud- 
low, who sat next to him, and pointing to the Pres- 
byterians, said that those fellows would never leave 
till the Army pulled them out by the ears. That 
day it became known that there existed an organiza- 
tion, a sort of Parliament, in the Army, the officers 
forming an upper council and the representatives of 
the rank and file a lower council. Two such repre- 
sentatives stood in the lower council for each squad- 

1 Rushworth, vi. 474. Parliamentary History, under date. 



268 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1647. 

ron or troop, known as " Adjutators," aiders, or " Agi- 
tators." This organization had taken upon itself to 
see that the Army had its rights. Far above every 
limited or selfish motive, moreover, it proposed to see 
that the upheaval should not have been in vain, but 
that England, in religion and politics, should gain a 
noble freedom. 

At the end of a month, there was still greater occa- 
sion for astonishment. Seven hundred horse sud- 
denly left the camp, and appearing without warning, 
June 2, at Holmby House, where Charles was kept, 
in charge of Parliamentary commissioners, proposed 
to assume the custody of the King. A cool, quiet 
fellow, of rank no higher than that of cornet, led 
them and was their spokesman, Joyce. " What is 
your authority ? " asked the King. The cornet simply 
pointed to the mass of troopers at his back. The 
King no doubt remembered that he had seen those 
stern ranks before, and in that same neighborhood, 
for over a few intervening ridges lay the hamlet of 
Naseby. The Parliamentary guard fraternized with 
the new-comers ; the King made little objection. He 
rode off, indeed, in good spirits, with his new guard 
to the Army headquarters, telling Joyce laughingly 
that he deserved to be hanged, but letting him know 
very plainly that he had taken a fancy to him. 
Charles, in fact, was weary of the Presbyterians, and 
glad to try his fortune among the Independents. He 
had no reason to complain of want of respect from 
the Army men. The chiefs disclaimed Joyce's seiz- 
ure : Fairfax, dismounting, kissed his hand, and Crom- 
well and Ireton appeared before him hat in hand. 



1 647.] THE RISE OF THE INDEPENDENT 269 

He was soon installed in his old palace of Hampton 
Court, and although the very trustiest of the Iron- 
sides, under Whalley, kept him under surveillance, his 
old friends were freely admitted to him, and he had 
almost the state of a real Sovereign. 

So bold a step as the seizure of the King made 
necessary other bold steps on the part of the Army. 
Scarcely a fortnight had passed, when a demand was 
made for the exclusion from Parliament of eleven 
Presbyterians, the men most conspicuous for extreme 
views. The Army meanwhile hovered, ever omi- 
nously, close at hand to the north and east of the 
city, paying slight regard to the Parliamentary prohi- 
bition to remain at a distance. The eleven members 
withdrew, and as an indication that the balance is 
now inclining to the Independents again, the name 
of Vane is at once found on a list of commissioners 
sent out to confer with the Army chiefs. 

But if Parliament was willing to yield, Presbyterian 
London and the country round about were not, and 
in July broke out into sheer rebellion ; apprentices, 
water-men, train-bands, people high and low, crowd- 
ing round the houses in Palace Yard by thousands, 
swarming in the corridors, showing displeasure by 
casting stones, kicking at the doors, and bursting in 
upon the sessions with their hats on. The more fa- 
natical Presbyterians thought of a new civil war at 
once, and projected the raising of a new army, which, 
with the help of London, might make head against 
the army of Fairfax and Cromwell. But the best 
wisdom and resolution were elsewhere. The Speak- 
ers of the Lords and Commons, at the head of the 



270 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1647. 

strength of the Parliament, fourteen Peers and one 
hundred Commoners, betook themselves to Fairfax, 
and on August 2 they threw themselves into the 
protection of the Army at Hounslow Heath, ten 
miles distant. A grand review took place. The con- 
summate soldier, Fairfax, had his troops in perfect 
condition, and they were drawn out twenty thousand 
strong to receive the seceding Parliament. The sol- 
diers rent the air with shouts in their behalf, and all 
was made ready for a most impressive demonstration. 
On the 6th of August, Fairfax marched his troops in 
full array through the city, from Hammersmith to 
Westminster. Each man had in his hat a wreath of 
laurel. The Lords and the Commons who had taken 
flight were escorted in the midst of the column ; the 
city officials joined the train. At Westminster the 
Speakers were ceremoniously reinstalled, and the 
Houses again put at work, the first business being to 
thank the General and the veterans who had recon- 
stituted them. The next day, with Skippon in the 
centre and Cromwell in the rear, the Army marched 
through the city itself, a heavy tramp of battle-sea- 
soned platoons, at the mere sound of which the war- 
like ardor of the turbulent youths of the workshops 
and the rough watermen was completely squelched. 
Yet the soldiers looked neither to the right nor left ; 
nor by act, word, or gesture was any offence given. 

Vane, who, as the Independents were recovering 
power, was again in the foreground, at once on 
August 6th, after the Parliament was reconstituted, 
brought before the House a form for an agreement 
with the King, at which a glance must be thrown. 



1 647.] THE RISE OF THE INDEPENDENTS. 27 1 

It was known as the Heads of Proposals, 1 and had 
been borne before the army as it marched through 
the city. It was Ireton's work, and had been by him 
laid before the King, a document memorable as a 
sincere and temperate effort at an agreement, the 
last effort of the Independents to make peace with 
Charles. There were to be biennial Parliaments ; the 
Parliament was to control the militia for five years, 
with a voice in subsequent arrangements, and no pub- 
lic trust was to be exercised for five years by persons 
who had borne arms against the Parliament. Omit- 
ting unessential details, as regards the important mat- 
ter of an ecclesiastical arrangement, it was left free 
whether Episcopacy or Presbyterianism should be 
established ; it was only stipulated that in any case 
there should be liberty of dissent ; it was even hinted 
that Papists and Jesuits might be left to themselves, 
except in so far as they should conspire against the 
order of the state. Most interesting of all, perhaps, 
was the manner in which the Commons were to be 
elected. Representation was to be equalized, all 
counties to have a number of members proportioned 
to the taxes they paid toward the burdens of the king- 
dom. The abuse of " rotten boroughs," the admis- 
sion of Burgesses, namely, for decayed or insignificant 
places, was to be remedied, and the number of mem- 
bers for such counties as had fewer than their proper 
proportion was to be increased. The King was 
to be restored to safety, honor, and freedom, with no 
limitation of his royal power beyond what was 
properly due to Parliament. 

1 Rushworth, vii. 731-736. 



272 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1647. 

If Charles had accepted the proposals, a polity 
would have been given to England quite similar to 
that which has existed since the Reform Bill of 1832. 
A reasonable Sovereign, one thinks, would certainly 
now, after so thorough a beating in the field, have 
receded from his claims, and been glad to accept an 
accommodation which left him unimpaired dignity. 
Cromwell, Ireton, and Vane had hopes that the King 
might be won. Charles, however, spurned the prop- 
ositions, entertained those who made them with 
bitter discourses, and repeated often : " You cannot 
do without me ; you will fall to ruin if I do not sus- 
tain you." It was not until after the rejection of 
these overtures, that in the Commons and the higher 
council of the Army Republicanism became pro- 
fessed, as something to which they were forced. The 
proper constitutional balance of King, Lords, and 
Commons, the leaders would have been satisfied 
with : but now Vane, Ludlow, Haselrig, Marten, 
Scott, Hutchinson, Sidney, scarcely answered when 
they were charged with wishing to do away with 
kingship. They were coming fast to speak of it with 
contempt. The sovereignty of the People, speaking 
through one assembly, was rising more and more 
within their thoughts, as the end toward which they 
must tend. 

Cromwell and Ireton persisted long. They were the 
real Army leaders, for Fairfax, though superb in the 
field, plays but a secondary part in every other sphere. 
The good qualities of Charles impressed them strongly. 
There is a fine picturesque story of how the tears 
rolled down the cheeks of Cromwell at the sight of 



1 647.] THE RISE OF THE INDEPENDENTS. 273 

the meeting at Hampton Court between the captive 
Charles and his children. Why could not bitter 
experience teach the King that he must lay aside his 
arrogant claims ? How attractive was the thought 
of a settlement in which, since there was to be little 
disturbance of the old order, all parties might be 
expected soon to acquiesce, and in which the King, 
as a duly limited Sovereign, might clothe his position 
with the graces and virtues which he was really so 
capable of showing ! All the courtesy, all the ten- 
derness, were unavailing, and while the leaders la- 
bored, the rank and file grew more and more revolu- 
tionary. At length the position of the chiefs became 
one of the greatest danger. The regiments mutinied 
against them, as treacherous to the Army and com- 
mitted to the King. It required all the tact and 
boldness of Cromwell to crush out the danger. Rid- 
ing up to the most violent, he entered their ranks, 
and caused fourteen of their number to be dra^sed 
forth. Three of these were at once tried for their 
lives, and one promptly shot. Discontent was re- 
pressed though not smothered, but just here the 
incurable treachery of Charles became in a singular 
way revealed. The leaders forsook him, and took 
sides with the men. The picturesque story which 
follows has been thought mythical, but there is no 
good reason for doubting it. 

At the Blue Boar Inn, in Holborn, when the lead- 
ers had long besought the King, and the soldiers 
were murmuring heavily, two stout troopers in buff", 
with high boots and hats slouched over weather- 
beaten faces, strode into the inner court, sat down in 



274 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1647. 

the tap, and called for tankards. So they remained 
through the evening, the London boosers about 
them looking with some interest at the stalwart fel- 
lows, who plainly had had a part on the great fields 
of the war. Toward ten o'clock, a courier, about de- 
parting for Dover, came through the crowd of drink- 
ers with the saddle on his head, which he was about 
to strap around his horse. As he left the room, the 
troopers followed him into the darkness of the court, 
seized suddenly the saddle, and, declaring that they 
had orders to search everything, ripped it open. In the 
lining lay a letter ; this they took, giving the saddle 
then to the frightened messenger. Patting him good- 
humoredly, they told him he was an honest fellow to 
whom they meant no harm. The troopers were none 
other than Cromwell and Ireton in disguise, who hav- 
ing learned that the King that night would dispatch 
a letter in this way to the Queen, disclosing his real 
intentions, took this means to intercept it. " When 
the time comes," wrote the King, " I shall very well 
know how to treat these rogues, and instead of a 
silken garter I will fit them with a hempen halter." 1 

A sudden change took place in the treatment of 
the King. His friends had been allowed to flock to 
him without restriction. He had been suffered to 
visit at the country-seats in the neighborhood, and 
except that there was never far off some stout sentry, 
armed and watchful, there had been little in his con- 

1 The story comes from Lord But see Watford's Antiquarian, 

Broghill, afterwards Earl of Or- March and May, 1887, for a dis- 

rery. Mr. S. R. Gardiner expressed cussion of its probability, which 

to me in conversation the opinion takes an unfavorable view, 
that this tradition may be admitted. 



1 647.] THE RISE OF THE INDEPENDENTS. 2J$ 

dition to suggest imprisonment. A strict severity 
was now maintained, and the King formed a resolu- 
tion, which possibly the Army chiefs for a deep pur- 
pose of their own, by some cunning management, 
suggested to him. On a dark night in November, 
he escaped, struck southward, and guiding his little 
party himself through the New Forest, which he 
knew well through his hunter experience, he reached 
at length the coast, and crossed to the Isle of Wight. 
Here he was to remain a year, not leaving it until, 
in the fulness of time, his victorious foes should con- 
duct him to his trial and his doom. November 
though it was, as he stood in the streets of Newport, 
a young girl gave him from her garden a beautiful 
crimson rose. The air was soft almost as summer, 
and the hearts of the people were loyal and tender 
toward him. Moreover, the governor of the island, 
young Colonel Hammond, though a son-in-law of 
Hampden and a favorite of Cromwell, and though at 
Naseby he had stood by the side of Pride, marching 
forward to save the day at the most desperate mo- 
ment, when Skippon was wounded and the centre 
was giving way, was at the same time the nephew of 
Dr. Hammond, the King's chaplain, and could not 
stand in the royal presence without receiving impres- 
sion. The King's home was at beautiful Carisbrook 
Castle, in the midst of one of the loveliest of English 
landscapes. Here, exercising on the bowling-green, 
discussing books, religion, philosophy, with congenial 
companionship, according to the superstition which 
few men of the time were without, and which influ- 
enced him much, dipping into astrology, and watching 



276 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1647. 

carefully the flickering of the wax-taper, always burn- 
ing in a silver basin at his bedside, he spent the 
days. Though outwardly so calm, so gracious, so 
marked with traits of royal majesty, his mind was 
from first to last busy with intrigues, quite conscience- 
less as to what oaths he might break, what friends 
disappoint, what treachery spin, so long as the end 
could be furthered, of which he never for a moment 
lost sight, the regaining of a sovereignty whose pre- 
rogatives should be utterly without trammel. 

His first days in the Isle of Wight were marked 
by an intrigue which came near making real for him 
all his hopes. It was frustrated only by the aston- 
ishing energy and ability of the men with whom he 
had to cope, and being frustrated, there was nothing 
left for him but the scaffold. Parliament, which had 
again become reactionary, sent commissioners to the 
King with propositions so moderate it was felt he 
must surely accede. At the same time commission- 
ers from Scotland came to Wight. The Parliament 
men with their message the King spurned. With the 
Scots, however, on the 26th of December, he made a 
secret treaty. He bound himself on the word of a 
Kino: to confirm the Covenant for such as had taken 
it, or might take it; to confirm Presbyterian Church 
government in England for three years, reserving for 
himself and his household the Anglican Liturgy; and 
to suppress the Independents and all other sects and 
heresies. The Scots in return were to send an army 
into England to restore him, on these conditions, to 
the throne. Thus at length, after long hesitation, 
came a decisive step. Charles threw his weight with 



1 647.] THE RISE OF THE INDEPENDENTS. 2 J J 

the Presbyterians and the Scots, granting all they 
asked. He felt certain, however, that in the event of 
success, " there would be nobody to exact all these 
particulars, but everybody would submit to what His 
Majesty should think fit to be done." 1 The treaty 
was to be kept secret as death. It was wrapped in 
lead, and buried in a garden, while the Scotch com- 
missioners hurried northward to prepare for war. 

The strait of the Independents was now great in- 
deed. They were, however, coming to an understand- 
ing one with another, dressing up with a united front, 
although as yet they knew not how threatening the 
foe was whom they must presently face. When the 
mutiny of the Army in October had been so promptly 
subdued, the mutineers had worn in their hats a 
paper which had been drawn up and printed among 
the Agitators, the lower council of the Army. It was 
called the " Agreement of the People : " at this, and 
at another manifesto of the Army, " The Case of the 
Whole Army," it is now time for us, trying as we are 
to trace American ideas in this great upheaval, to 
cast a glance. It was not unnatural, perhaps, that, 
seeing their Generals on such intimate terms with the 
King, who lived in splendor while the world did hom- 
age to him, the soldiers should have suspected them 
of lukewarmness, or indeed treachery, as regarded 
things the soldiers felt to be essential. This they 
express, and at the same time they declare to their 
General as follows, — sentences which certainly no 
American can read without wishing to press those 
stubborn Ironsides to his heart as his sworn brethren : 

1 Clarendon, v. 2219. 



278 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1647. 

" We presume that your Excellency will not think 
it strange, or judge us disobedient or refractory, that 
we should state the case of the Army, how declined 
from its first principles of safety, what mischiefs are 
threatened thereby, and what remedies are suitable. 
For, sir, should you, yea, should the whole Parliament 
or Kingdom exempt us from this service, or should 
command our silence and forbearance, yet could not 
they nor you discharge us of our duty to God, or to 
our own natures. ... If our duty bind us when we 
see our neighbor's houses on fire, to waive all forms, 
ceremonies, or complements forthwith (not waiting 
for order or leave) to attempt the quenching thereof, 
without farther scruple as thereunto called of God, 
. . . then much more are we obliged and called, when 
we behold the great mansion-house of the Common- 
wealth, and of this Army, on fire all ready to be de- 
voured with slavery, confusion, and ruin, and their 
national native freedom (the price of our treasure and 
blood) wrested out of their hands, as at this present 
appeareth to our best understandings, &C." 1 This 
letter was dated at Hempstead, October 15, 1647, and 
signed by the Agitators, for the regiments of horse 
of Cromwell, Ireton, Fleetwood, Rich, and Whalley, 
— the core of the Ironsides ! Though prolix, it con- 
tains no cant or superstition. Is there not, indeed, 
much beauty and pathos here ? And now let us 
see what is recommended in a paper of propo- 
sals, received in Parliament, November 1, from the 
Army : — 

1 From the letter to Fairfax, Whole Arm}-." Rushworth, Hist. 
accompanying " The Case of the Coll. vii. 846, etc. 



1 647.] THE RISE OF THE INDEPENDENTS. 279 

" Having by our late labors and hazards made it 
appear to the world at how high a rate we value our 
just freedom ; and God having so far owned our cause 
as to deliver the enemies thereof into our hands, we 
do now hold ourselves bound in mutual duty to each 
other, to take the best care we can for the future, to 
avoid both the danger of returning into a slavish con- 
dition, and the chargeable remedy of another war. 
. . . That hereafter our Representatives [Parlia- 
ments] be neither left to an uncertainty for the time, 
nor made useless to the ends for which they were in- 
tended, we declare, 1. That the people of England 
being at this day very unequally distributed by coun- 
ties, cities, and boroughs, for elections of their depu- 
ties in Parliament, ought to be more indifferently 
[impartially] proportioned, according to the number 
of inhabitants." The clause goes on to demand the 
arrangement of this before the end of the present 
Parliament, which, in the 2d article, the soldiers re- 
quest may take place in September, 1648, to prevent 
the inconvenience arising from the long continuance 
of the same persons in authority. After providing 
in the 3d article that Parliament shall be chosen bi- 
ennially, every second March, we find in article 4 
a most significant declaration : " That the power of 
this and all future Representatives [Parliaments] of 
this nation is inferior only to theirs who chuse them, 
and extends, without the consent of any other person 
or persons, to the enacting, altering, and repealing of 
laws, to appointments of all kinds, to making war 
and peace, to treating with foreign states, &c ; " with 
the following limitations, however : " 1. That matter 



280 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1647. 

of religion, and the ways of God's worship, are not 
at all intrusted by us to any human power, because 
therein we cannot admit or exceed a tittle of what 
our consciences dictate to be the mind of God, with- 
out wilful sin : nevertheless, the public way of in- 
structing the nation, so it be not compulsive, is 
referred to their discretion." Other limitations are, 
that there shall be no impressing of men for service, 
that after the present Parliament no one is to be ques- 
tioned for anything said or clone in the late disturb- 
ances, that laws are to affect all alike, and to be equal 
and good. " These things w r e declare to be our 
native rights," the document concludes, and we are 
compelled to maintain them, " not only by the exam- 
ple of our ancestors, whose blood was often spent in 
vain for the recovery of their freedoms, suffering them- 
selves through fraudulent accommodations to be still 
deluded of the fruit of their victory, but also by our 
own woful experience, who, having long expected and 
dearly earned the establishment of those certain rules 
of government, are yet made to depend for the set- 
tlement of our peace and freedom, upon him that 
intended our bondage and brought a cruel war upon 
us." 1 

This manifesto was signed by nine regiments of 
horse and seven of foot. 

Bravo, Ironsides ! The completest Republican- 
ism, thorough government of the people ; the finest 
spirit of toleration and charity! Had Roger Wil- 
liams and Samuel Adams put their heads together; 
could the outcome have been better ? " The power 

1 Rushworth, vii. 859, etc. 



I647-] THE RISE OF THE INDEPENDENTS. 28 1 

of this and all future Parliaments of this nation is 
inferior only to theirs who chuse them, and extends, 
without the consent of any other person or persons, 
to the enacting, altering, and repealing of laws, to 
appointments of all kinds, to making war and peace, 
to treating with foreign states ; " no exception to be 
made but in the matter of religion, — that to be in- 
trusted to no human power, but each man to choose 
as his conscience may dictate. 

Who the man was who formulated so finely these 
American utterances no one can say. They came 
from the rank and file : under some one of those 
steel headpieces worked the brain that outlined this 
noble polity, in which there was no place for King, 
Lord, or Prelate, because the People was to be Sov- 
ereign. The leaders felt uneas}'. Cromwell could 
not yet go so far; Ireton now rejected it with indig- 
nation. 1 At a meeting convened in November to 
establish harmony between chiefs and soldiers, when 
the latter rejected a statement in which the name 
and essential prerogatives of a King were provided 
for, Ireton abruptly departed, declaring that such a 
matter must not be touched upon. Vane, too, no 
doubt at this time was appalled at such extreme 
ideas. Both Court, Presbytery, and Prelacy were 
hateful, but Royalty and an Upper House seemed too 
potent and deeply rooted to be disturbed. How un- 
tried and chimerical the scheme of a Republic, in 
which all precedents were to be disregarded and tra- 
dition to be sacrificed ! From whom, too, did the 
ideas emanate ? From men of no social importance, 

1 Godwin, ii. 451. 



282 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1647. 

from Levellers, fanatical, haughtily insubordinate, 
discountenanced by every class in society hitherto 
held to be respectable ! 

But at such times men think quickly. The lead- 
ers took the ideas of the rank and file, and before 
the year ended the chiefs and the soldiers were one. 
December 22, the shortest day of the dark English 
winter, a public reconciliation took place amid fasting 
and prayer. Together they sought the Lord from 
nine in the morning until seven at night, Cromwell 
and Ireton among others praying fervently and pa- 
thetically. The assembly came forth hand in hand, 
and the condition of union was that Charles Stuart, 
that man of blood, should be called to account. 



PART III. 

AMERICAN ENGLAND. 
1648-1653. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE IRONSIDES 1 TAKE THINGS IN HAND. 

When Parliament heard, on the 3d of January, 
1648, of the rejection by the King of their proposi- 
tions, a scene occurred similar to that in which, in 
1645, the Self Denying Ordinance was moved. As 
at that time the obscure member Zouch Tate was 
put forward to make the motion, in that way, per- 
haps, less likely to be opposed than if made by a 
chief, so now a certain unknown Sir Thomas Wroth, 
suddenly rising, moved " to lay the King by and to 
settle the kingdom without him." As Vane on the 
previous occasion had at once seconded Zouch Tate, 
so now Ireton seconded Wroth, and the Indepen- 
dents carried it. The public ferment, however, was 
immense both in and out of Parliament, and Crom- 

1 Since the entire Army now, Cromwell, it is no abuse of a term 
under the Independent chiefs, had whose application is very vague 
become pervaded by the spirit of to call them all Ironsides. 



284 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1648. 

well, perplexed in the confusion, tried manfully to 
reconcile the jarring factions. Getting together 
the Presbyterian and Independent leaders, clerical 
and lay, he sought vainly to establish some common 
ground. Failing here, he convened privately the 
civil Independent chiefs and the Army officers, — 
to us a memorable meeting, for here it was that 
Vane for the first time took square Republican 
ground. Ludlow reports 1 that with Hutchinson, 
Sidney, and Haselrig, Vane, too, was loud in reject- 
ing all idea of monarchy as condemned by Bible, 
reason, and experience. Fairfax and Cromwell were 
more cautious. They were pledged to the soldiers, 
indeed, to bring the King to account, but were 
hardly ready to commit themselves to a government 
without monarchy. The embarrassments were in 
fact terrible, and led to curious manifestations. On 
the present occasion, the discussion growing warm, 
and Cromwell being pressed to declare himself till 
he could no longer evade it, he suddenly rose, and 
with a forced jest rushed out, flinging, as he went, a 
cushion at Ludlow's head. Ludlow threw one in re- 
turn, " which made him hasten down-stairs faster 
than he desired." We shall come upon similar inci- 
dents hereafter: it would be wrong to interpret them 
as mere unseemly mirth. 

With the departure of the Scots the Committee of 
Both Kingdoms, of course, came to an end, and on 
January 3d Parliament constituted as its executive 
a fresh committee, which contained all the English 
members of the old, and enough new men to replace 

1 Memoirs, 183. 



1648.] THE IRONSIDES TAKE THINGS IN HAND. 285 

the departed Scotchmen. As now constituted, the 
committee contained twenty-one members, seven 
Lords and fourteen Commoners, among whom the 
leaders were Cromwell, Vane, St. John, and Hasel- 
rig. It was strongly Independent ; and as Crom- 
well presently took the field, we may be certain that 
the powerful mind of Vane was at the centre of its 
influence. It met, like its predecessor, at Derby 
House, Canon Row, close by St. Stephen's, the house 
at which Pym had died, and was called the Derby 
House Committee. Here the most weighty affairs 
were arranged beforehand, coming afterwards before 
the Houses ; the authority of the Derby House Com- 
mittee was almost dictatorial, and it was to play a 
great part in the tremendous events of the year. 

Threatening indeed was the tempest which the 
Independents had now to breast. The treaty of the 
Scots with the King soon became known. Forty 
thousand Scots under the Duke of Hamilton were to 
march southward as soon as might be. They were 
Covenanters, and just before had been in arms 
against all Prelatists. At present, however, they 
hated nothing so much as " that impious toleration 
settled by the Two Houses contrary to the Cove- 
nant," and were prepared to strike hands with any 
or all who believed in putting that down, relying 
upon the King's uncertain word for security that a 
proper Presbyterianism for England should be the 
outcome. At the news the English Presbyterians 
were at once up in arms : still more, the broken Cav- 
aliers appeared, horsed and sworded ; and behind 



286 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1648. 

these, again, Papists, at home and abroad, were on 
the alert, ready to fight once more for Charles, each 
faction feeling sure that advantage to itself would 
in some way come out. London was in an uproar. 
In spite of the vigor of Vane and St. John in head- 
ing off plots, the cry, " For God and King Charles ! " 
rang into the ears of Parliament from the streets of 
Westminster, and the mob was only put down by 
stern charges from two regiments quartered in the 
city. Close at hand in Kent, Dorset, Essex, Surrey, 
Hertford, Nottingham, the Royalists were rising, 
putting at their head the old chiefs that had been 
beaten at Marston Moor and Naseby. Word came 
that the North was aflame, and that Sir Marmaduke 
Langdale, the " long, thin Yorkshireman," had seized 
the frontier fortresses, Berwick and Carlisle, that the 
invading Scots might have easy entrance. In Ire- 
land, the strongest Parliamentary supports went over 
to the King. Eastward, the Prince of Wales block- 
aded the mouth of the Thames with nineteen ships, 
while the Parliamentary fleet revolted and put their 
Admiral ashore. No part of the kingdom had been 
so prompt in the rising as Wales. Before winter 
had ended, the King's standards were vigorously ad- 
vanced there, and almost at once the Parliament had 
no standing room. If Parliament had been a unit 
against all this danger, it would have seemed less ap- 
palling. It had dwindled until less than a hundred 
were present. Before April was ended, however, 
absentees came back, more Presbyterians than Inde- 
pendents, until the tone of Parliament became weak, 
and at last reactionary. 



1648.] THE IRONSIDES TAKE THINGS IN HAND. 287 

Fortunately the Derby House Committee at the 
centre remained under the control of the Indepen- 
dents. It faced the perils with all possible intrepid- 
ity and force, and in the Army, Ironsides now to a 
man, it possessed perhaps the most fearful instru- 
ment of warfare which the world has ever seen. 
What the temper of the Army was in these days 
we may know from an affecting account that has 
come down to us, from one of those prayerful, un- 
bending soldiers, 1 of a great meeting at Windsor, on 
the eve of the wonderful campaign of the summer, 
in which rank and file and Generals, kneeling and 
weeping together, beating their breasts and crying 
aloud to the Lord, became transfused with a spirit- 
ual energy that seems almost supernatural. Indeed, 
though the opposition was so general and terrible, 
its strength was more apparent than real. Many 
Presbyterians could not bring themselves to strike 
hands with the Cavaliers. In Scotland, too, discord 
paralyzed to some extent the effort for the King. 
But with every deduction, men have seldomed faced 
a storm more overwhelming than those Indepen- 
dents of 1648. Well did they need to steel their 
spirits from whatever source power could come ! 

" In the year Forty-seven, you may remember," 
says Adjutant Allen, "we in the army were engaged 
in actions of a very high nature ; leading us to very 
untrodden paths, both in our contests with the then 
Parliament, as also conferences with the King. In 

1 Adjutant Allen's Memorial in England at Windsor Castle, in 
of that remarkable Meeting of 1648, Somers Tracts, vi. 499-501. 
many of the Officers of the Army 



288 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1648. 

which great works, wanting a spirit of faith, and 
also the fear of the Lord, and also being unduly sur- 
prised with the fear of man, which always brings a 
snare, we to make haste, as we thought, out of such 
perplexities, measuring our way by a wisdom of our 
own, fell into Treaties with the King and his Party ; 
which proved such a snare to us, and led into such 
labyrinths by the end of that year, that the very 
things we thought to avoid, by the means we used 
of our own devising, were all, with many more of 
a far worse and more perplexing nature, brought 
back upon us. To the overwhelming of our spirits, 
weakening of our hands and hearts ; filling us with 
divisions, confusions, tumults, and every evil work ; 
and thereby endangering the ruin of that blessed 
Cause we had, with such success, been prospered in 
till that time. 

" For now the King and his Party, seeing us not 
answer their ends, began to provide for themselves, 
by a Treaty with the then Parliament, set on foot 
about the beginning of Forty-eight. The Parlia- 
ment also was, at the same time, highly displeased 
with us for what we had done, both as to the King 
and themselves. The good people likewise, even 
our most cordial friends in the Nation, beholding 
our turning aside from the path of simplicity we had 
formerly walked in, and been blessed in, and thereby 
much endeared to their hearts, began now to fear, 
and withdraw their affections from us, in this politic 
path which we had stepped into, and walked in to our 
hurt, the year before. And as a farther fruit of the 
wages of our backsliding hearts, we were also filled 



1648.] THE IRONSIDES TAKE THINGS IN HAND. 289 

with a spirit of great jealousy and divisions amongst 
ourselves ; having left that wisdom of the word, 
which is first pure and then peaceable ; so that we 
were now fit for little but to tear and rend one an- 
other, and thereby prepare ourselves, and the work 
in our hands, to be ruined by our common enemies. 
The King and his Party prepare accordingly to ruin 
all by sudden Insurrections in most parts of the 
Nation : the Scot, concurring with the same designs, 
comes in with a potent Army under Duke Hamilton. 
We in the army, in a low, weak, divided, perplexed 
condition in all respects, as aforesaid : — some of us 
judging it a duty to lay down our arms, to quit our 
stations, and put ourselves into the capacities of 
private men — since what we had done, and what 
was yet in our hearts. to do, tending as we judged to 
the good of these poor Nations, was not accepted by 
them. 

" Some also even encouraged themselves and us to 
such a thing by urging for such a practice the ex- 
ample of our Lord Jesus ; who, when he had borne 
an eminent testimony to the pleasure of his Father 
in an active way, sealed it at last by his sufferings ; 
which was presented to us as our pattern for imita- 
tion. Others of us, however, were different minded ; 
thinking something of another nature might yet be 
farther our duty ; — and these therefore were, by 
joint advice, by a good hand of the Lord, led to this 
result ; viz., To go solemnly to search out our in- 
iquities, and humble our souls before the Lord in the 
sense of the same; which, we were persuaded, had 
provoked the Lord against us, to bring such sad per- 



29O YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1648. 

plexities upon us at that day. Out of which we saw 
no way else to extricate themselves. 

" Accordingly we did agree to meet at Windsor 
Castle about the beginning of Forty-eight. And 
there we spent one day together in prayer ; inquir- 
ing into the causes of that sad dispensation, coming 
to no farther result that day but that it was still 
our duty to seek. And on the morrow we met again 
in the morning ; where many spake from the Word 
and prayed ; and the then Lieutenant-General Crom- 
well did press very earnestly on all there present, 
to a thorough consideration of our actions as an 
Army, and of our ways particularly as private Chris- 
tians : to see if any iniquity could be found in them ; 
and what it was ; that if possible we might find it 
out, and so remove the cause of such sad rebukes 
as were upon us (by reason of our iniquities, as we 
judged) at that time. And the way more partic- 
ularly the Lord led us to herein was this . To look 
back and consider what time it was when with joint 
satisfaction we could last say to the best of our judg- 
ment, The presence of the Lord was among us, and 
rebukes and judgments were not as then upon us. 
Which time the Lord led us jointly to find out and 
agree in ; and having done so, to proceed, as we then 
judged it our duty, to search into all our public 
actions as an Army, afterwards. Duly weighing 
(as the Lord helped us) each of them, with their 
grounds, rules, and ends, as near as we could. And 
so we concluded this second day, with agreeing to 
meet again on the morrow. Which accordingly we 
did upon the same occasion, reassuming the consid- 



1648.] THE IRONSIDES TAKE THINGS IN HAND. 29 1 

eration of our debates the day before, and reviewing 
our actions again. 

" By which means we were, by a gracious hand of 
the Lord, led to find out the very steps (as we were 
all then jointly convinced) by which we had departed 
from the Lord, and provoked Him to depart from 
us. Which we found to be those cursed carnal 
Conferences, our own conceited wisdom, our fears, 
and want of faith had prompted us, the year before, 
to entertain with the King and his Party. At this 
time, and on this occasion, did the then Major Goffe 
(as I remember was his title) make use of that good 
Word, Proverbs First and Twenty-third, Turn you at 
my reproof : behold I will pour out my Spirit ttnto 
you, I will make known my words unto you. Which, 
we having found out our sin, he urged as our duty 
from those words. And the Lord so accompanied 
by His Spirit, that it had a kindly effect, like a word 
of His, upon most of our hearts that were then pre- 
sent ; which begot in us a great sense, a shame and 
loathing of ourselves for our iniquities, and a justi- 
fying of the Lord as righteous in His proceedings 
against us. 

" And in this path the Lord led us not only to see 
our sin, but also our duty ; and this so unanimously 
set with weight upon each heart, that none was 
hardly able to speak a word to each other for bitter 
weeping, partly in the sense and shame of our in- 
iquities ; of our unbelief, base fear of men, and carnal 
consultations (as the fruit thereof) with our own 
wisdom, and not with the Word of the Lord — which 
only is a way of wisdom, strength, and safety, and all 



292 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1648. 

beside it are ways of snares. And yet we were also 
helped, with fear and trembling, to rejoice in the 
Lord, whose faithfulness and loving-kindness, we 
were made to see, yet failed us not ; — who remem- 
bered us still, even in our low estate, because His 
mercy endures for ever. Who no sooner brought 
us to His feet acknowledging Him in that way of 
His (viz. searching for, being ashamed of, and willing 
to turn from, our iniquities,) but He did direct our 
steps ; and presently we were led and helped to 
a clear agreement amongst ourselves, not any dis- 
senting. That it was the duty of our day, with the 
forces we had, to go out and fight against those 
potent enemies, which that year in all places appeared 
against us. With an humble confidence, in the 
name of the Lord only, that we should destroy them. 
And we were also enabled then, after serious seek- 
ing His face, to come to a very clear and joint reso- 
lution, on many grounds at large there debated 
among us, That it was our duty, if ever the Lord 
brought us back again in peace, to call Charles 
Stuart, that man of blood, to an account for that 
blood he had shed, and mischief he had done to his 
utmost, against the Lord's Cause and People in these 
poor Nations. 

" And how the Lord led and prospered us in all 
our undertakings that year, in this way ; cutting His 
work short, in righteousness ; making it a year of 
mercy, equal if not transcendent to any since these 
Wars began ; and making it worthy of remembrance 
by every gracious soul, who was wise to observe the 
Lord, and the operations of His hands — I wish 
may never be forgotten." 



1 64S.] THE IRONSIDES TAKE THINGS IN HAND- 293 

Promptly obedient to the Derby House Committee, 
Lambert — whom we saw deserted by his recruits 
at Marston Moor, and who since then had devel- 
oped into a brilliant soldier, like Ireton bred to the 
law, ready witted in council as well as brave and re- 
sourceful in action — was sent North to make head 
against the invading Scots. Fairfax, now Lord 
Fairfax, through his father's death, was less thoroughly 
an Independent than his fellow generals. As a 
noble, he could hardly have full sympathy with the 
children of the People. His wife was Presbyterian 
in her inclinations, a woman of force, who influ- 
enced him much. He was already shrinking from 
the bald Republicanism that was proclaiming itself 
into a reactionary course that was to carry him 
back before he died to the party of the Stuarts. As 
a soldier he was still most chivalrous and intrepid. 
He could not be spared, but it was thought well to 
put at his side Ireton, who almost as much as Crom- 
well was the heart of the Ironsides. By the Derby 
House Committee, Fairfax and Ireton, in May, were 
thrown upon the insurgents near London. They 
fell like a thunderbolt upon the gathering discontent. 
There was to be no quarter now, for the King was no 
longer present ; a far fiercer spirit than that of the 
earlier war prevailed. The flame of revolt was piti- 
lessly quenched in blood. Resistance ended at 
length except within the lines of Colchester in Essex. 
Before that obstinate stronghold, Fairfax and Ireton 
lay throughout the summer, its siege and final cap- 
ture forming a horrible incident even in that century 
of horrors. 



294 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1648. 

. But where, meantime, was Cromwell ? Distrusted 
by some as too violent, by others as having labored 
suspiciously to form a bond with the King, he felt 
that his prestige was departing. Wearied out with 
efforts at accommodation and dealing with civil prob- 
lems, we may be sure that the champion shouted 
gladly at length his war-cry, " The sword of the Lord 
and of Gideon," and assumed his helmet. Leaving 
the Derby House Committee to be guided mainly 
by Vane and St. John, it was his task, first to march 
with five regiments to recover Wales, and then to 
face what other dangers the summer might bring 
forth. He was impetuous, probably, as never before, 
his soul on fire with fanaticism (or shall we call it 
inspiration ?) as he swept with his perfect troopers 
through the smouldering rebellion to those outer re- 
gions which it was to be his part to subdue. The 
tramp of those squadrons was merciless and swift ; 
but they had not beaten out resistance before upon 
the land burst the dreaded northern foe. 

One may still look upon the ancient walls of Car- 
lisle, rugged souvenirs of the times of blood and 
iron we have left behind us. They have fronted war 
in all the masks it has assumed for a thousand years. 
They have been swept of defenders by bolts from 
cross-bows, as well as breached by round-shot from 
cannon. They have seen the pomp and the terror 
that has attended the march of a hundred armies. 
The walls of Carlisle have never seen a gayer parade 
than that of the twelve thousand Scots who marched 
past them in July, the Duke of Hamilton, their 
leader, at the head of his life-guards, the trumpeters 



1648.] THE IRONSIDES TAKE THINGS IN HAND. 295 

riding first in scarlet coats set off with silver lace. 
Sir Marmaduke was at hand to join them with all 
the Royalist strength of the North, and the invasion 
rolled toward London unhindered, twenty thousand 
strong. The wary Lambert, with a handful of Iron- 
sides, hovered on the flank, not strong enough to at- 
tack, but dreadful to foragers, and cutting off every 
scout and courier. As the Scots approached, sedi- 
tion beset the Independent power at the very heart. 
Parliament was thronged with men who called the in- 
vaders brethren. The banished Holies came back to 
resume his seat, and steps were even taken for the 
impeachment of Cromwell. What men have fought 
to success against odds more enormous ! 

On the 1 ith of July Cromwell had won the day in 
Wales. On the 13th he set out with five or six 
thousand, worn already with the hardest marching 
and fighting. All seemed to have served, however, 
only to knit their vigor. " Send me some shoes," 
wrote Cromwell to Derby House, " for my poor tired 
soldiers. They have a long march to take." From 
western Wales he traversed almost all England with 
a rapidity unexampled, not rinding his shoes until he 
reached Nottingham. He was waging a war in the 
yame of Parliament, which at the moment Parlia- 
hent was doing all it could to stop. If leader ever 
/ought, says Masson, with rope about his neck, it 
w r as he. He now pressed northward with even greater 
speed. His rude face was all alight, as on the 
march he passed ever from rank to rank, now storm- 
fully praying, now shouting scriptural war-cries, now 
joining from the saddle in the chanting of some fierce 



296 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1648. 

psalm : and the men, as they sped on in the summer 
dust and heat, cried and prayed in response till their 
spirits glowed as if touched by a coal from the altar 
of the Lord. They, at least, felt that to be the qual- 
ity of their enthusiasm. 

In three weeks the march was over, from south- 
western Wales far eastward, then into the North. A 
junction was formed with Lambert, and now, eight 
thousand against twenty thousand, the battle was to 
be joined. Its story here would scarcely be in place. 
Vane, indeed, working at Derby House, making 
head, too, as he could in St. Stephens against the 
overwhelming mass crying out for an ignoble peace, 
and demanding the head of the leader who was 'fight- 
ing to bring about a better destiny for England, 
had a relation close and important with all that was 
done in the field. But it was less close, perhaps, 
than in the case of Naseby and Marston Moor. It 
is enough to say that Cromwell struck the Scots at 
Preston, in Lancashire. Hamilton thought him per- 
haps still in Wales, and was proceeding in a long 
straggling line, his men on ill terms with the Eng- 
lish Cavaliers, his officers jealous among themselves. 
The Ironsides dashed upon him like lightning from 
a clear sky. Sir Marmaduke held them for + "^ 
hours, bitterly breasting a second time the A 

which had thrown him into rout on the Broad 1 S 
All courage was vain. Each column was cms. 
then each fugitive squadron hunted down and p 
verized. Nought was left but here and there 
wretched Scot, fleeing toward the border, pretending 
to be dumb that his brogue might not betray him to 



1648.] THE IRONSIDES TAKE THINGS IN HAND. 297 

the enraged country people, holding out his hands 
pitifully for bread. Nearly at the same time Fairfax 
and Ireton brought Colchester to surrender. Eng- 
land was in the hands of the Independents, and those 
hands were stern. 



In these terrible weeks, what heart-sinkings must 
have beset the Independents in London, striving to 
make head against the hostility about them, pre- 
pared to leap upon them at the first sign of ill-suc- 
cess in the field ! In the Houses the majority was 
hopelessly against them, but how resolute was the 
Derby House Committee ! Under the secrecy to 
which the members were all sworn, how vigorous the 
administration ! they sent not only the shoes to Crom- 
well in which the Ironsides marched to Preston, but 
gathered recruits and money, powder and ball, pikes 
and breast-plates, horses, cannon, stores of every 
kind, so as to maintain at their highest efficiency 
those superb fighters. The present writer has care- 
fully studied the Order Books of the Committee, as 
Gualter Frost, the clerk, day by day, made note of 
the items of its business. The record is meagre, and 
as regards information about the particular work of 
young Sir Henry Vane, there is the exasperating em- 
barrassment already referred to. Old Sir Henry Vane 
is of the Committee, too, and though father and son 
are sometimes distinguished, frequently the reference 
is simply to " Vane," and the historian is quite at a 
loss which of the two is meant. During the spring 
months not more than six or seven of the twenty-one 
are usually present, and at the end of May, Frost is 



298 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [164S. 

instructed to secure a larger attendance. Of the 
faithful ones, we can make sure of young Sir Harry. 
On the 3d of June he is appointed to despatch pow- 
der to Bristol for Cromwell's use in Wales ; just 
after he is to go to Fairfax, closing in on Colchester ; 
a^ain " to so to the Lord General about the revolted 
ships." As one reads, he hears faintly, in fancy, the 
roar of insurrection all about the little group, and the 
more distant thunder of invasion along the border. 
In their places, they are as brave, perhaps in as much 
peril, as the men at the front. 

In July and August, young Sir Harry seems from 
the record to have been much absent, and a few 
years after this time, in a memorable letter to Crom- 
well, from whom he had become estranged, occurs 
the following passage : * " The message which in 
former times you sent me is in my memory still ; it 
was immediately after the Lord had appeared with 
you against Duke Hamilton's army, when you bid a 
friend of mine tell your Brother Vane (for so you 
then thought fit to call me) that you were as much 
unsatisfied with his passive and suffering principles, 
as he was with your active." Cromwell and Vane 
up to this time had been in complete accord, and the 
words just cited contain the only hint existing that 
they now in any way differed. What precisely Crom- 
well criticised it is impossible to say. Can there 
have been any diminution of energy in Vane's work 
which Cromwell thought deserved rebuke ? At this 

1 From a letter to Cromwell, in Question" in an old volume in the 
1656, from Carisbrook Castle, British Museum, 
bound up with the " Healing 



1648.] THE IRONSIDES TAKE THINGS IN HAND. 299 

time he was somewhat broken down by illness : for 
that reason he may have shown a slackness which 
Cromwell misinterpreted. On August 25th, the day 
the victory at Preston was announced in the Com- 
mons, Vane receives permission " to go into the 
country for the recovery of his health." * There is 
no other evidence than his own words that his great 
companion censured him. Indeed there is evidence 
in the quoted passage and elsewhere that Cromwell 
held Vane at this time in warm affection. While his 
soul was growing calm from the tumult of battle, on 
September 1st Cromwell wrote in a note to St. John: 
" Remember my love to my dear brother H. Vane : 
I pray he make not too little nor I too much, of out- 
ward dispensations." 2 

Vane was not so crippled as to be prevented from 
being at work through most of the month of August. 
The constantly recurring topic of negotiations with 
the King again came up and was violently pressed, 
Vane and St. John heading the Independents in the 
Commons in strenuous resistance. It was, however, 
carried over their heads, and before the armies, pant- 
ing from their hard fighting, could make their will 
felt, new commissioners were appointed, to try once 
more to bring Charles to terms. Vane's stay in the 
country was a short one. On September 1st he was 
appointed one of the fifteen commissioners to wait 
upon the King, and there was no man but him of the 
fifteen " who did not desire that a peace might be 
established by that treaty." 3 If his energy had ever 
relaxed, it was now restored. 

1 Journal of the Cojnmons. 8 Clarendon, v. 2343. 

2 Carlyle, ii. 453. 



300 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1648. 

The conduct of the King was more pitiable than 
ever. " This negotiation," he wrote in August, " will 
be derisive like the rest. There is no change in my 
designs." x His real thought was to escape to Ire- 
land, form a league with the Catholics, and with the 
help of money and arms from France, continue ener- 
getic war. He was not shaken in this secret purpose 
by the tremendous defeats of the summer. Out- 
wardly, however, when the commissioners appeared, 
he seemed compliant. Misfortune had turned his 
hair gray, and deepened the lines of his face. The 
Presbyterian leaders threw themselves on their knees, 
and besought him weeping to make concessions ; 
and day after day throughout the fall he discussed 
elaborately the propositions offered, his heart mean- 
time secretly fixed on something far different. Vane 
stood with his fellow commissioners in the pres- 
ence of the plausible majestic Prince, bearing his 
part in the debates. Now, for the first time since 
his extreme youth, he came under that marvellous 
spell which Charles could exercise, and he seems to 
have felt its power. He declared they had been 
much deceived in the King; they had believed him 
to be a weak person, but they found him a man of 
great parts and abilities. 2 Still Vane, probably alone 
of the commissioners, distrusted him utterly, and if 
any faith may be put in the report of enemies, met 
his cunning with cunning. " We have some here," 
wrote a Royalist, " who under a face of friendship 
do ill offices, and most of his Majesty's councils 
in private are rifled before they come into public 
debate. It is to be feared that Lord Say and Sir 

1 Guizot, 415. 2 Godwin, ii. 612. Echard, ii. 615. 



1648.] THE IRONSIDES TAKE THINGS IN HAND. 3OI 

Harry Vane have appeared to some in the shape of 
angels. These two hate the Covenant as they do 
the Devil." 1 It is charged, too, that he persuaded 
the King " not to be too prodigal in his concessions, 
— that he had already yielded more than was fit for 
them to ask or him to grant : yet afterwards this 
most restless man did most fiercely and perfidiously 
inveigh," as if nothing substantial had been granted. 2 
The long delay in the negotiations was also ascribed 
to him, that the Army, having time thoroughly to 
finish their work in the field, might be ready to 
interpose before any treaty could be made. 3 It is 
quite possible that Vane's astuteness was at this 
time in full play ; the use of it, if ever venial, would 
be so against such an object as Charles, whose ways 
were never more crooked than now. On November 
28th the conference was over, and the commissioners 
proceeded to report. 

The ability of the Independent statesmen fully 
kept pace with that of their Generals. While the 
management of the Presbyterians was poor, the other 
party, 4 " entirely led and governed by two or three 
to whom they resigned implicitly the conduct of their 
interest," maintained themselves wonderfully when 
things were dark for them, and immediately when 
fortune turned, drove toward what had become their 
great purpose with all possible force and skill. 
Though the Presbyterian plan of sending commis- 
sioners anew to the King had been carried out, care 

1 Mercurio Volpone or the Fox, 8 Echard, ii. 616. Burnet, i. 60, 
October 5, 12. Thomasson Tracts, 61. 

cccclxvii. 4 Clarendon, v. 2220. 

2 Anthony a Wood, Athenae 
Oxon., art. " Vane." 



302 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1648. 

was taken that Vane should be among them to see 
that no harm should come from the negotiation. 
Meantime, in London, there was no waiting, but 
things were guided toward the consummation which 
the Independents wished. Thomas Scott was out- 
spoken in Parliament. Now that the popular feeling- 
began to run in their favor, great petitions, engineered 
by the Independent chiefs, began to pour in from 
London and the country, denouncing the attempt to 
come to an agreement with the King, and announcing 
democratic principles. One which Henry Marten 
wrote proclaimed the House of Commons the su- 
preme authority in England, repudiated the idea that 
King or Lords had a right to stand against it, and 
declared that matters of religion should be free from 
the power of any authority on earth. Forty thou- 
sand in and near London, Presbyterian though the 
city was in tone, were found to sign this, and the 
people of the shires, taking example, pronounced 
themselves as emphatically. 1 

As the fall went on, the Army, getting breath from 
the struggle of the summer, caused it to be known 
that the ideas for which they had fought must no 
longer be trifled with. Since for us the story of 
these times is interesting: for the manifestation of 
Republicanism, the Grand Army Remonstrance of 
November must have our careful attention, as mark- 
ing another great step in advance. It has been seen 
that Republicanism first appears in 1647, in the 
lower council of the Army, among the Agitators who 
represent the rank and file. Next we find the great 

1 Whitlocke : Memorials, ii. 413, 419. 



1648.] THE IRONSIDES TAKE THINGS IN HAND. 303 

civil leaders committing themselves to the idea, in 
the beginning of 1648. According to Ludlow's ac- 
count of the meeting between civil and Army chiefs, 
in which the cushion-throwing was a feature, Crom- 
well was not then prepared, as were Vane, Marten, 
and Scott, for the utter laying by of the old order. 
Under their helmets, however, in the Lancashire 
smitings, and before Colchester, the revolutionary 
ideas ripened fast. With the fall, the captains stood 
thoroughly with their men, and with the chiefs at 
St. Stephen's. 

The Grand Army Remonstrance, 1 written by Ire- 
ton, is the long and carefully prepared work of a 
scholar and lawyer. Though addressed to the House 
of Commons, it was intended to express to the nation 
the position of the Army, and the plan they meant 
to pursue. The attempt to treat with the King was 
solemnly denounced. " Though the Lord had again 
laid bare his arm, and that small Army which they 
had ceased to trust, and had wellnigh deserted and 
cast off, had been enabled to shiver all the banded 
strength of a second English insurrection, aided by 
Scotland, — even after the rebuke from God, were they 
not pursuing the same phantom of accommodation?" 
The principle was laid down that the Representative 
Council of Parliament must be supreme, that any 
form of monarchy must be regarded as a creation 
of that freely elected Council, for special ends and 
within special limits, and that the Monarch, if in any 
way derelict, could justly be called to account. It 
was urged that Charles deserved to be so called to 

1 Rushworth, vii. 1297-8, 1311-12, 1330. Whitlocke, ii. 436. 



304 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [164S. 

account. If there were any hope of amendment, he 
might be treated tenderly. " If there were good evi- 
dence of a proportionable remorse in him, and that 
his coming in again were with a new or changed 
heart, . . . his person might be capable of pity, mercy, 
and pardon, and an accommodation with him, with a 
full and free yielding on his part to all the aforesaid 
points of public and religious interest in contest, 
might, in charitable construction, be just, and possi- 
bly safe and beneficial." But the King had been 
utterly faithless, it was urged, and continued to be 
so. In a passage showing how thoroughly they pen- 
etrated the King's falseness, it was declared that 
even now, after his complete second ruin, he was 
plotting and prevaricating, while secretly expecting 
aid from the Irish rebels. " Have you not found him 
at this play all along, and do not all men acknowl- 
edge him most exquisite at it ? " At length come the 
immediate demands : and first, that the King might 
be brought to justice ; that his heirs, the boys after- 
ward to be Charles II and James II, should return 
to England and submit themselves completely to the 
judgment of the nation ; and that a number of the 

chief instruments of the Kins: in the wars should be 

<_> 

brought with him to capital punishment. All obdu- 
rate delinquents were to undergo banishment and con- 
fiscation of property, and all claims of the Army to 
be fully satisfied. In the prospective demands with 
which the noble document ends, the Army require: 
1. A termination of the existing Parliament within a 
reasonable time ; 2. a guaranteed succession of sub- 
sequent Parliaments, annual or biennial, the franchise 



1648.] THE IRONSIDES TAKE THINGS IN HAND. 305 

to be so adjusted that Parliament shall really repre- 
sent all reputable Englishmen ; 3. the temporary 
disfranchisement of all who had adhered to the King ; 
and, 4. a strict provision that the Representative of 
the people should be supreme in all things, only not 
to re-question the policy of the Civil War itself, or 
touch the foundations of common right, liberty, and 
safety. In the polity indicated, the Kingship, if kept 
up, was to be a purely elective office, every successive 
holder of which should be chosen expressly by Par- 
liament, and should have no veto on laws passed by 
Parliament, — in other words, an American Presi- 
dent, — elected by Congress, however, instead of an 
Electoral College, and shorn of his great power of the 
negative voice. 

..-" This document was formally presented on the 20th 
of November by a deputation of officers headed by 
a colonel, who bore a brief note from Fairfax, still 
Lord general of the Army and acting with it, ill 
at ease, however, between his energetic Presbyterian 
wife without and his own predilections, which by no 
means favored so clean a sweep of the old order. 

The Independents, of course, welcomed the Remon- 
strance, but the more resolute Presbyterians, conspic- 
uous among whom was stout-hearted, narrow-minded 
Prynne, with his twice-cropped ears, declared that 
" it became not the House of Commons, who are a 
part of the Supreme Council of the Nation, to be 
prescribed to, or regulated and baffled by, a Council 
of Sectaries in arms." 1 Strange compound that he 
was of bigot, bore, and hero, one cannot refuse ad- 

1 Parliamentary History, under date. 



306 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1648. 

miration at this time to him ; for, full of magnanimous 
self-forgetfulness, he was the boldest of those now 
trying to block the path of the all-conquering Inde- 
pendents. He pleaded nobly for the man who had 
done him only injury. " All the royal favor I ever 
yet received from his Majesty or his party, was the 
cutting off of my ears, at two several times, one after 
another, in a most barbarous manner; the setting me 
upon three several pillories, in a disgraceful manner, 
for two hours'at a time, the burning of my licensed 
books before my face, by the hand of the hangman, 
the imposing of two fines upon me of ,£5,000 apiece, 
the loss of my calling, . . . above eight years im- 
p'risonment, &c." He defied the Army, now in the 
day of its power, the tumult of whose all-overwhelm- 
ing march as it poured itself into London must have 
rolled into St. Stephen's almost to the drowning of 
his own voice. His plea was for peace and an ac- 
commodation : the poor fellow, whom Charles and 
Laud had left scarcely more than a mere scrap of 
humanity, was exalted for the moment beyond him- 
self as he pleaded for his persecutors. 

The concessions which the commissioners, return- 
ing from Wight, reported that the King was willing 
to make, were no greater than those several times 
before rejected. In the vehement debate as to 
whether or no they should be accepted, a significant 
incident took place. A few nobles had kept pace 
all along with the most liberal avowals, but the bold- 
est among these now began to draw back. Nathaniel 
Fiennes, son of Lord Say and heir to his title, here- 
tofore thoroughly with the Independents, became now 



1648.] THE IRONSIDES TAKE THINGS IN HAND. 307 

reactionary, advocated peace, and maintained that 
the King's concessions were sufficient. When the 
commissioners had left the King at Wight, Charles 
had put in a most shrewd word to the nobles among 
them : " My Lords, you cannot be ignorant that in 
my ruin you may already perceive your own, and that 
near at hand." Lord Say, it is believed, was affected 
by the remark, and Fiennes, remembering his title, 
recoiled from the levelling to which all were presently 
to be subjected. 

Cromwell had not yet returned from the North, 
but all the other great Independent chiefs were there 
in St. Stephen's, those early December days : St. John, 
Marten, Scott, Ireton, Blake, Dean, Ludlow, Hutch- 
inson, Haselrig, Harrison, Algernon Sidney. Pos- 
sibly in the gallery may have been John Milton, the 
pamphleteer, and his cousin Bradshaw, the famous 
lawyer from the Inns of Court, who was about to be 
called to play a memorable part. In the front of 
these as chief spokesman stood the man who at 
Wight, digging below the mines of the wily Charles, 
had run his counter-mines, and who, no*w that plain 
and downright utterance was in place, was determined 
that the word should be forceful. The acceptance 
of the treaty " was early pressed in Parliament by 
many. But Sir Henry Vane truly stated the matter 
of fact relating to the treaty, and so evidently dis- 
covered the design and deceit of the K's answer that 
he made it. clear to us, that by it the justice of our 
cause was not asserted nor our rights secured for the 
future." x Clarendon's picture is no doubt substan- 
tially correct. 

1 Ludlow, i. 268. 



308 young sir henry vane. [1648. 

" Young Sir Henry Vane had begun the debate 
in the highest insolence and provocation ; telling 
them that they should that day know and discover, 
who were their friends, & who were their foes ; or, 
that he might speak more plainly, who were the 
King's party in the house, and who were for the 
people ; and so proceeded with his usual grave bit- 
terness against the person of the King, and the gov- 
ernment that had been too long settled ; put them in 
mind that they had been diverted from this old set- 
tled resolution and declaration, that they would make 
no more addresses to the King ; after which the King- 
dom had been governed in great peace, and begun 
to taste the sweet of that Republican government 
which they intended and had begun to establish, 
when, by an accommodation between the city of 
London and an ill-affected party in Scotland, with 
some small contemptible insurrections in England, 
all which were fomented by the city, the Houses 
had, by clamor & noise, been induced & compelled 
to reverse their former votes & resolution, and enter 
into a personal treaty with the King ; with whom 
they had not been able to prevail, notwithstanding 
the low condition he was in, to give them any secu- 
rity ; but he had still reserved a power in himself, or 
at least to his posterity, to exercise as tyrannical a 
government as he had done ; that all the insurrec- 
tions, which had so terrified them, were totally sub- 
dued ; and the principal authors and abettors of them 
in their custody, and ready to be brought to justice, 
if they pleased to direct and appoint it : that their 
enemies in Scotland were reduced, and that kingdom 



1648.] THE IRONSIDES TAKE THINGS IN HAND. 309 

entirely devoted to a firm and good correspondence 
with their brethren, the Parliament of England ; so 
that there was nothing wanting, but their own con- 
sent and resolution, to make themselves the happiest 
nation & people in the world ; and to that purpose 
desired, that they might, without any more loss of 
time, return to their former resolution of making 
no more addresses to the King ; but proceed to the 
settling of the government without him, and to the 
severe punishment of those who had disturbed their 
peace and quiet, in such an exemplary manner as 
might terrify all other men for the future from mak- 
ing the like bold attempts : which, he told them, 
they might see would be most grateful to their Army, 
which had merited so much from them by the remon- 
strance they had so lately published." ' 

Clarendon continues that a certain murmur showed 
this speech was much disliked, and that many blamed 
"his presumption in taking upon himself to divide 
the House, & to censure their affections to the public, 
as their sense & judgment should agree or disagree, 
with his own." Vane, indeed, did not prevail. The 
victory was to be won by other than Parliamentary 
means. The debate had lasted twenty -four hours: 
it was nine o'clock in the morning after the all day 
and all night struggle. Two hundred and forty-four 
members were still present, and it was resolved, 140 
against 104, that the King's reply was an adequate 
basis for peace. 

The Independents now felt that the crisis was ter- 
rible. The King would be in London at once, and 

1 Clarendon, v. 2375, etc. 



310 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1648. 

free, and all that they had fought for would be lost. 
They met the danger by a most revolutionary step, 
in which Ireton seems to have been the leading 
figure. After a conference of Parliament with officers, 
in which if Vane was present his influence was over- 
ruled, the troops were put in motion by Ireton's 
orders, without Fairfax's knowledge. Only one day 
had passed since the decisive vote, but with all 
promptness two regiments, one of infantry, one of 
cavalry, took their station at the doors of the Par- 
liament, at their head rough Pride, foundling, dray- 
man, then the soldier who had saved the centre at 
Naseby with his prompt succor, and fought with the 
foremost to win the day at Preston. He held a list 
in his hand, and as the members gathered, he forbade 
entrance to all such as opposed the Army. Forty- 
one members were excluded the first day, still more 
the next, one hundred and forty-three in all. The 
famous " Pride's Purge " was accomplished. By mil- 
itary force the Long Parliament was cut down to a 
fraction of its number, and the career begins of the 
mighty " Rump," 1 so called in the coarse wit of the 
time because it was " the sitting part." On Decem- 
ber 7, after the Purge had been accomplished, Crom- 
well took his seat for the first time since the warfare 
of the summer. " God is my witness," he cried 
everywhere, " that I know nothing of what has been 
doing in this House ; but the work is in hand ; I am 
glad of it, and now we must carry it through." 2 As 
the Independents " carry it through," it will at once 
appear that it is no abuse of words to call the Eng- 

1 Rushworth, vii. 1353-6. 2 Ludlow, 117. 



1648.] THE IRONSIDES TAKE THINGS IN HAND. 31 1 

land they sought to establish American-England. 
Those peerless soldiers and statesmen failed in what 
they sought. We shall see how insuperable the ob- 
stacles were which prevented the realization of their 
great idea. They died for their idea in multitudes, 
upon scaffold and battlefield. Their generation was 
not worthy of them ; but no cause has ever been 
maintained by more steadfast striving, or possessed 
a nobler line of martyrs. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE RUMP AGAINST THE WORLD. 

" I confess I was exceedingly to seek in the clear- 
ness of my judgment as to the trial of the King. I 
was for six weeks absent from my seat here, out of 
my tenderness of blood." So spoke young Sir 
Henry Vane long after this time. 1 Pride's Purge 
and the trial and execution of Charles by which it 
was immediately followed, seemed to him unneces- 
sary violence. As to Pride's Purge, it is hard to 
see, at the present time, what other course it was 
possible for the Army to take in order to save their 
cause. Nothing can be finer at any rate than the 
manifestos of Army and Parliament at this crisis, for 
the composition of which Ireton must be especially 
credited. " We are not," it was declared, " a merce- 
nary Army, hired to serve any arbitrary power of the 
state, but called forth and conjured by the several 
declarations of Parliament to the defence of our own 
and the People's just rights and liberties ; and so we 
took up in justice and conscience to those ends, and 
are resolved ... to assert and vindicate them against 
all arbitrary power, violence and oppression, and all 
particular interests and parties whatsoever." These 

1 Speech, 9th February, 1659. 



1 649.] THE RUMP AGAINST THE WORLD. 313 

men saw everything they had fought for endangered 
by the half-hearted and bigoted Presbyterians, and 
rather than lose all, they thought it best to resort to 
an irregularity. Vane could not go with them and 
withdrew from public life. 

Since Vane had no part in matters, there is no 
occasion here to <nve in detail the end of the Kins. 
The High Court was promptly constituted, with 
Bradshaw, a name new in state affairs, though famed 
then as a lawyer, as presiding officer. That Vane 
did not withdraw to a distance seems certain. " It 
was observed that young Sir Henry Vane, who had 
long absented and retyred himself by scruple of con- 
science as it was said, came again and sat in the 
House of Commons on Saturday, 20th of January, 
the day that the King was first brought to trial." 1 
Vane was not alone in his position ; St. John was 
with him, so Fairfax. Algernon Sydney, too, writes : 
" I was at Penshurst when the act for the King's trial 
passed, and coming up to town, I heard that my 
name was put in. I presently went to the Painted 
Chamber, where those who were nominated for 
judges were assembled. A debate was raised, and I 
positively opposed the proceeding. Cromwell using 
these formal words, ' I tell you, we will cut off his 
head with the crown on it' I replied, ' You may 
take your own course ; I cannot stop you ; but I 
will keep myself clear from having any hand in this 
business.' And saying this, I immediately left them 
and never returned." 

No hesitation now. Hapless Charles is brought 

1 Leicester's Journal (Blencowe), p. 54. 



3 14 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1649. 

closely guarded to Whitehall. So utterly treacher- 
ous, so incapable of forming an idea of the people 
he had undertaken to rule, yet with all that, having 
so much of the spirit and accomplishments of a 
gentleman ! What need to tell how he died ! There 
is nothing in English history better known. He 
stepped from the window of his banqueting-hall upon 
the scaffold with a tread as heroic as that of Straf- 
ford. Those who slew him turned toward him ten- 
derly; the Independent heart, so steadfast, yet so 
gentle, voiced itself thus afterward in the verse of 
Andrew Marvell. 1 

" While round the armed bands 
Did clap their bloody hands, 

He nothing common did or mean 

Upon that memorable scene ; 
But with his keener eye 
The axe's edge did try : 

Nor called the Gods with vulgar spite 

To vindicate his helpless right ; 
But bowed his comely head 
Down as upon a bed." 

How Vane would have preferred to have the 
King disposed of, he did not leave on record ; but 
probably deposition seemed to him more expedient 
as well as more humane. It is not possible now to 
decide whether the execution was good policy, though 
modern writers in sympathy with the Independents 
have condemned it as a great mistake. 2 The leaders 
were in a position of terrible embarrassment, and it 
is curious to trace a parallel between the conduct of 

1 Panegyric on Cromwell. 

2 May: Democracy in Ewope, ii. 436. Godwin, ii. 691, 692. 



1 649] THE RUMP AGAINST THE WORLD. 315 

Cromwell and that of Abraham Lincoln, when sur- 
rounded by embarrassments of similar gravity. As 
Lincoln relieved the overpowering tension of brain 
and heart by conduct which often was sharply cen- 
sured as buffoonish, telling funny stories, slapping his 
comrades on the back, bursting into a backwoods- 
man's guffaw as he sat tilted back in his chair with 
his feet on the mantelpiece, so Cromwell relieved the 
strain upon him with coarse horse-play that from that 
day to this has been called brutal and heartless. His 
bout of cushion-throwing with Ludlow in the anxi- 
eties of the previous year has been described. So 
now when the King's death-warrant was signed by 
the Regicides, there was a curious smearing of one 
another's faces with ink, — a sort of terrible merri- 
ment in which Cromwell led the way with hysterical 
laughter that one feels might at any moment have 
become an outburst of bitter weeping. 

What dangers there might have been, if recourse 
had been had to deposition ! With what restless 
energy the King would intrigue, and how likely, in 
the swaying of the tumultuous time, that some top- 
wave would toss him into the throne again, how- 
ever strong his prison-bars ! No doubt all this was 
anxiously weighed. Among the Regicides, Thomas 
Scott was a spirit most eloquent and heroic, and long 
after this he set forth how the matter lay in the 
minds of that resolute band. 

" Had he [Charles] been quiet after he was deliv- 
ered up to us by the Scots ! ... So long as he 
was above ground, in view there were daily revoltings 
among the Army, and risings in all places, creating 



316 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1649. 

us all mischief, more than a thousand Kings could 
do us good, it was impossible to continue him alive. 
. . . It was resorted unto as the last refuse. The 
Representatives in their aggregate body, have power 
to alter or change any government, being thus con- 
ducted by Providence. The question was whose 
[on whom] was that blood that was shed? It could 
not be ours. Was it not the Kings, by keeping 
delinquents from punishment, and raising armies ? 
The vindictive justice must have his sacrifice some- 
where. The King was called to a bar below to 
answer for that blood. We did not assassinate or 
do it in a corner. We did it in the face of God and 
of all men. If this be not a precept, the good of the 
whole, I know not what is — to preserve the good 
cause, a defence to religion and tender consciences." 1 
The beheading of the King might well seem to in- 
volve smaller risks to their cause than to suffer him 
to live ; but mark the result. Immediately a mighty 
revulsion of feeling took place in favor of Charles, 
so that he became forthwith a hero and a martyr, 
not merely to his own party, but to thousands who 
had been his enemies. The Eikon Basilike ap- 
peared at once, purporting to be the Kings spiritual 
autobiography, one of the most influential of books, 
through which it came about that in the thoughts 
of millions Charles stood beatified, in an odor of 
sanctity scarcely less indeed than that which sur- 
rounded Christ. After eleven years Charles II came 
back amid enthusiasm so intense and general that 
he blamed himself as a fool for not having come back 

1 Forster, Life of Marten, 385. 



1 649.] THE RUMP AGAINST THE WORLD. 317 

before ; and in that interval of eleven years, after a 
short trial of the Commonwealth, no political arrange- 
ment seemed possible but an autocracy, supported 
on the pikes of the Ironsides, maintained only 
through energy and ability as remarkable as have 
ever been shown in human history. 

The execution was most disastrous to English free- 
dom ; but who can say that any other course would 
have been less disastrous ? Those who claim that if 
the King's life had been spared, the Stuarts need 
never have come back; that England might have be- 
come a Republic, or if not a Republic, that monarchy 
would have appeared in a shape so modified as to 
make the change to popular government an easy one, 
are quite too confident. What was the best course 
to take it is impossible to decide now: it was just 
as hard to decide then. It was a crisis where the 
best heads might well differ. Here for the first time 
young Sir Henry Vane, and the great figure whom 
we have seen rise from such small beginnings until 
he dominates the period we are studying, stand op- 
posed to one another in judgment. Cromwell and 
Vane are, however, still friends. 

As the Commonwealth took the place of the mon- 
archy, it seemed to be felt that Vane could not be 
spared, and he was besought to come back. It was 
resolved at first to exact an oath from all in author- 
ity, approving of everything which had been done. 
Such an oath Vane refused to take ; Pride's Purge 
and the beheading of the King he declared to be 
melancholy blunders. In respect, however, to the 
polity which it was proposed to establish he was in 



318 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1649. 

accord, and was willing to lend his abilities to carry 
it out. To gain such a helper, the oath was given 
up. 1 Vane pronouncing openly his condemnation of 
the past, reappeared at Westminster February 26th, 
an/l soon stood in a position of influence more 
marked than ever before. 

What were the ideas with which this wonderful 
" Rump," still the Long Parliament, though purged, 
began its career ? It will be felt, as they are stated, 
that no ideas can be in a finer sense American. The 
4th of January may be set down as the beginning of 
the new order of things. That day 2 it was resolved 
by the little company now left in the great empti- 
ness of St. Stephen's, for not only were the excluded 
members absent, but many timid ones, " That the 
Commons of England in Parliament assembled do 
declare, that the People are, under God, the original 
' of all just power; and do also declare, that the Com- 
mons of England in Parliament assembled, being 
chosen by and representing the People, have the 
supreme power in this nation ; and do also declare, 
that whatsoever is enacted or declared for law, by 
the Commons in Parliament assembled, hath the 
force of a law, and all the People of this nation are 
concluded thereby, although the consent and con- 
currence of the King or House of Peers, be not had 
thereto." 

A declaration was received from the Army on Jan- 
uary 15th, the day the charge was read against the 
King. The Army urged: "That having since the 

1 Vane's Speech at trial. - Commons Journal. 



1649] THE RUMP AGAINST THE WORLD. 319 

end of the last war waited for a settlement of the 
peace and government of this nation : and having not 
found any such essayed or endeavored by those whose 
proper work it was, but their many addresses and 
others in that behalf, rejected and opposed, and only 
a corrupt closure endeavored with the King on terms 
serving only to his interests and theirs that promoted 
it, and being thereupon . . . necessitated to take ex- 
traordinary ways of remedy, they have at last finished 
the draught of such a settlement in the nature of an 
Agreement of the People for peace among them- 
selves, it containing the best and most hopeful foun- 
dations for the peace and future well government of 
this nation, that they can possibly devise. And they 
appeal to the consciences of all that read it, to wit- 
ness whether they have therein provided or pro- 
pounded anything of advantage to themselves . . . 
above others, or aught but what is as good for one 
as for another ; not doubting but that those worthy 
patriots of Parliament will give their seal of approba- 
tion thereunto, and all good people with them. But 
if God shall suffer the People ... to be so blinded 
. . . as to make opposition thereto, . . . they hope 
they shall be acquitted before God & good men from 
the blame of any further troubles, distractions, and 
miseries to the kingdom, which may arise through 
the neglect and rejection thereof." 1 

On the 20th the " Agreement of the People " was 
formally presented. It has the name and many of 
the ideas of the manifesto of the Agitators, in the 
fall of 1647. It has become now a detailed and 

1 Rushworth, vii. 1392. 



320 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1649. 

definite scheme of government on which we can well 
afford to dwell. 

In 1647, Ireton, to whom the bold and masterly 
elaboration was for the most part due, had not been 
ready for so radical a step, and had left the council 
abruptly, as we have seen, at the suggestion of laying 
by the King; but in the Army now, rank and file 
and chiefs stood together. The paper consisted of 
ten articles. Art. I demands the dissolution of the 
present Parliament by the end of April, 1649. Art. 
II, assuming that the supreme power in England is 
thenceforth to be a single representative House, de- 
clares that every such future " Representative " shall 
consist of four hundred members, or not more, and 
distributes these with great care, among the shires, 
cities, and boroughs of England and Wales. York- 
shire is to send twenty members; Devonshire, seven- 
teen ; Middlesex, fourteen ; Cornwall, enormously 
over-represented hitherto, eight ; and so on until we 
reach the small counties of Rutland and Flint, which 
have but one each. It is worth while to specify to 
some extent in order to see how remarkably the re- 
forms of 1832 were anticipated. Art. Ill gives the 
time of meeting and defines the qualifications of the 
electors and the eligible. The electors are to be all 
men of full age and householders, except paupers 
and (for the first seven years) armed adherents of the 
King in the late wars. The eligible are to be those 
qualified as electors, with restrictions designed to keep 
out for the first few Parliaments the King's partisans. 
Art. IV considers the matter of a quorum. Art. V 
is very important, requiring every Parliament, within 



1 649.] THE RUMP AGAINST THE WORLD. 32 1 

twenty days of its first meeting, to appoint a Coun- 
cil of State, to be the acting ministry or government 
in cooperation with itself, and also in the interval 
between it and the next Parliament. Passing over 
Arts. VI, VII, VIII, as relatively unimportant, in Art. 
IX we find the relation in which the government is 
to stand to the Church. Christianity, it is hoped, 
will be the permanent national religion : Parliament 
may establish any form of church not Popish or 
prelatic ; dissenters are, however, to be tolerated and 
protected, the liberty nevertheless not " necessarily 
to extend, to Popery or Prelacy." Art. X defines 
treason and indicates what in the preceding articles 
shall be held as essential. 

Except the IXth article, relating to the religious 
establishment, which judged by modern ideas is nar- 
row, there is nothing here not most thoroughly 
American. Ireton himself, like Cromwell and Vane, 
was ready for the broadest toleration, including even 
Jews, Infidels, and Pagans ; but even in the Rump 
there were prejudices that must be humored. On 
the 6th of February it was resolved : * " That the 
House of Peers in Parliament is useless and danger- 
ous, and ought to be abolished ; " and on the follow- 
ing day, " that the office of King ... is unnecessary, 
burdensome, and dangerous to the liberty, safety, 
and public interest of the People of this nation, and 
therefore ought to be abolished." The old order 
was thus completely swept away, and England was 
to be a Republic. The English reforms already 
gained in the 19th century, and still in progress at 

1 Cot/imons Journal. 



322 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1649. 

the present hour, were all anticipated : all, too, that 
is most essential in the American system had been 
formulated. The question now was, could the Re- 
public, the Commonwealth, be sustained. 

The case did indeed seem a desperate one. The 
Commonwealth had been set up by about sixty 
men at the centre who never had more need to 
be Ironsides than then. Only two sevenths of the 
people of England could be counted upon to sus- 
tain them. The Presbyterians, who once had been 
so zealous against the King, hated the Sectaries 
at least equally. The Cavaliers — Episcopalians and 
Catholics — were, of course, bitterly hostile. This 
vast opposition for the time was smitten into silence 
by the Independent triumph of the preceding sum- 
mer, but all knew that it was waiting in sullenness for 
its opportunity. Fortunately the opposition, at bitter 
discord in itself, could not unite against its enemies. 
Not the smallest of the difficulties of the Republi- 
cans was one arising from the more violent members 
of their own party. In particular, trouble flowed 
from that most intrepid and uncompromising come- 
outer John Lilburne, and a picturesque account of 
a stormy scene comes clown to us from his own hand, 
when he and three associates, equally uncompromis- 
ing, were brought before the Independent chiefs. 1 
" I marched into the room," he says, " with my hat 
on ; but looking, I saw divers of the House of Com- 
mons present, and so I put it off." He refused to 
acknowledge their authority, and when a prison was 
threatened, solemnly protested, " before the Eternal 

1 Masson, iv. 46 etc. 



I649-] THE RUMP AGAINST THE WORLD. 323 

God of Heaven and Earth, I will fire it and burn it 
down to the ground if I possibly can, although I be 
burnt to ashes with the flames thereof. . . . After 
we were all come out, and all four in a room close 
by them all alone, I laid my ear to the door, and 
heard Lieut, general Cromwell (I am sure of it) very 
loud, thumping his fist upon the Council table till it 
rang again, and heard him speak in these very words, 
or to this effect : ' I tell you, Sir, you have no other 
way to deal with these men but to break them in 
pieces.' Upon which discourse of Cromwell's, the 
blood ran up and down in my veins, and I heartily 
wished myself in again amongst them (being scarce 
able to contain myself), that so I might have gone 
five or six storeys higher than I did before." 

Such was the state of things in England. How 
was it elsewhere ? In Ireland, the Marquis of Or- 
mond had succeeded in uniting the Catholic and 
Protestant Royalists, forming a power which rose 
most threateningly against the Independents. The 
Presbyterians, though not coalescing with Papists 
and Prelatists, were equally violent against the new 
order, and scarcely standing-ground was left in the 
island for the " Honest Party." In Scotland, matters 
were even darker. At the time of the King's execu- 
tion, Scotch commissioners had been sent to London, 
instructed by Argyle, who since the battle of Preston 
had been in the ascendancy, to take advice from 
friends in England. " Who those friends at Lon- 
don were, can be understood of no other men but 
Cromwell and young Sir Harry Vane, with whom 



324 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1649. 

Argyleheld close correspondence." 1 When the head 
of the King fell, however, all Scotland, with Argyle 
at the head, rose in horror. Whatever distractions 
had existed, there was a universal revulsion of feeling 
toward the Stuarts. Almost as soon as the news 
of the execution was received Charles II was pro- 
claimed, February 5, at the cross of Edinburgh, and 
invited to come to Scotland at once from his place 
of refuge in Holland. Such was the aspect of affairs 
at home, and abroad what could the Independents 
expect, but a world in arms ? 

No stouter battle has ever been fought in this 
world than that of this little knot of Republican, 
one might say American Englishmen, against this 
enormous odds. A desperate unhesitating course 
was the only one possible, and it was at once entered 
upon with a skill and vigor not surpassed in the 
annals of men. Pass in review for a moment the five 
or six giants who stand now at the guiding lines. 
That Cromwell was preeminent must be, of course, 
admitted, but it must be remembered that as yet he 
had by no means arrived at the fame which set him 
on a pinnacle. In these days Vane was scarcely less 
a name of might ; and the deep-thinking Ireton, his 
face seamed with the scar of Naseby, was a power. 
Sir Arthur Haselrig, who had led his " lobsters " in 
many a sharp field, served now in the saddle, now in 
command of a fortress; — again, with articulated shell 
and sword and lance-antennae laid aside, on the floor 
of Parliament, — a blunderer, but honest, forceful, 
and devoted. Noble champions from the field, also, 

1 Clarendon, v. 2433. 



1649] THE RUMP AGAINST THE WORLD. 325 

were Scott, Hutchinson, Blake, Dean, Ludlow, and 
Sidney. Devil-may-care Harry Marten, too, was 
never absent ; sometimes setting St. Stephen's in 
a roar, sometimes circumventing a difficulty by a 
dexterous expedient. This bright, indefatigable, in- 
trepid radical, the only one, except Cromwell, in this 
stern company in whom there stuck a trace of hu- 
mor, must have afforded by his companionship a 
relief most grateful and salutary under that dismal 
sky. " He was exceedingly happy in apt instances ; 
he alone hath sometimes turned the whole house. 
Making an invective speech one time against Old 
Sir Harry Vane, when he had done with him, he 
sayd, ' But for Young Sir Harry Vane ' — and so 
sate him down. Several cryed out : ' What have you 
to say to Young Sir Harry? ' He rises up : 'Why 
if Young Sir Harry lives to be old, he will be Old 
Sir Harry,' and so sate down and set the whole 
House to laus:hinQr as he often did." 1 To those men- 
tioned, the names of Whitlocke and Bradshaw must 
be added, lawyers of weight, the former of whom, 
though time-serving rather than heroic in nature, 
now rendered great service by helping to keep the 
legal traditions unbroken, while the latter, having 
been President of the High Court of Justice that 
condemned the King, was to play a prominent part 
in the years to come. 

How did the " Honest Party " set to work to main- 
tain themselves in the midst of their perils ? Acting 
precisely in the spirit of Abraham Lincoln's homely 
proverb, that it is not well to swap horses while cross- 

1 Anthony a Wood : Athena Oxon., art. " Marten," iii. 1243. 



326 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1649. 

ing streams, they resolved to face their perils under 
the old order, deferring for the moment the carry- 
ing out of the idea of Ireton, the election of the 
new Parliament. The purged Long Parliament, the 
" Rump," was maintained, the expediency of the 
measure being wittily illustrated by Henry Marten 
in a parable in those days very famous. 1 . When the 
child Moses, he said, was found by the daughter of 
Pharaoh in the ark of bulrushes, and she wanted a 
nurse for it, to whom but the child's own mother was 
the office entrusted ! Better, then, that the baby 
Commonwealth should be nursed for a while by those 
who had brought it into being. 

But though % the election of a new Parliament was 
for the present postponed, another important feature 
of Ireton's plan was at once adopted, — the Council 
of State. This was decided upon February 7. As at 
length constituted, it included forty-one members, of 
whom nine were a quorum, and its first meeting was 
on February 17. As Vane was drawn forth from his 
retirement, he at once was placed here. We first 
find his name in the record on the 23d, and thence- 
forth throughout the continuance of the Common- 
wealth, he, more than any other one man, was the soul 
of that body. How great was Vane's influence ap- 
pears in an early record of the Council, April 16, 
1649. Though Cromwell, Fairfax, Ludlow, Marten, 
and other leaders are present, the business considered 
is comparatively unimportant, as if some one were 
waited for. Vane enters late, and at once the delib- 
erations take on a different character. A matter is 

1 Masson, iv. 40. Godwin, iii. 117. Clarendon, vi. 2692. 



I649-] THE RUMP AGAINST THE WORLD. 327 

forthwith brought up of the utmost gravity, which 
led, in fact, in the end to a war with Spain. Probably 
the case had been referred to him to be reported 
upon : his weight is plainly seen. 1 

It must be carefully noted that Vane takes up 
Republicanism only hesitatingly : to the end of his 
career the traditions of England have power over him. 
Had he been able, he would have saved the Mon- 
archy, and in some form the House of Lords, estab- 
lishing: some such order as that indicated in the 
" Heads of Proposals," which, in 1647, he, with 
Cromwell and Ireton, had tried to induce Charles to 
adopt. King and Peers were obstinate, and there 
was nothing for it but to sweep them away. The 
People must be supreme: that had become Vane's 
fixed political faith : in virtue of that principle he 
was a Republican : the King to be servant not Sov- 
ereign, and with no title but the popular assent to 
his elevation ; the Peers, ministers of the People, 
in no sense their masters. Their necks were stiff, 
and there was no way but to trample them under 
foot ; but to his dying day Vane had a yearning for 
the ancient order, which at the present moment was 
so completely overswept and superseded. 

Since Vane stood in such relation to this famous 
Council of State, the career of which was destined to . 
be very glorious, we must study it somewhat closely. 
Now that the old state of things had disappeared, 
the whole executive government was represented by 
the one single word " Committee." 2 In those times 

1 Bisset, i. 98 etc. 

2 Calendar of State Papers, Mrs. M. A. E. Greene, Domestic series, 
1649-50. 



328 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1649. 

of danger, all were anxious to avoid responsibility, 
and apart from the Army and Navy, no man accepted 
office other than as a member of some committee. 
The Council of State, elected by Parliament annually, 
was virtually a great committee of the Rump, which 
bestowed upon it powers almost plenary. As Parlia- 
ment now had but eighty members, of whom not 
threescore were commonly present, the Council of 
State, with its forty-one members, all of whom were 
in Parliament but three, commanded a working ma- 
jority of the House. The Council in fact was an 
expedient for combining in compact shape all that 
was ablest among the Independents for effective 
work. Though they refer perpetually to Parliament, 
it is not by way of appeal as to an independent gov- 
erning power, but from themselves as a newly con- 
stituted power, to themselves with some additions 
constituting: the Lons: Parliament. The Council sue- 
ceeded the Derby House Committee, as that had 
succeeded the Committee of Two Kingdoms, and its 
first place of meeting was that same Derby House 
in Canon Row in which Pym six years before had 
died : soon after, however, Whitehall became the 
locality. Bradshaw became the presiding officer, and 
the secretary was the same Gualter Frost who had 
served in that capacity the Derby House Committee. 
For some unexplained reason Ireton was not a mem- 
ber ; in the early weeks Cromwell was of course the 
predominant figure. Besides Cromwell, Vane, and 
Bradshaw, we find on the Council men we have 
learned to know well, Fairfax, Skippon, Haselrig, St. 
John, Whitlocke, Hutchinson, Ludlow, Marten, and 



i649-] THE RUMP AGAINST THE WORLD. 329 

Scott. They met at different times from the Parlia- 
ment that the members might be present at each. 
They often came together at daylight, and one can 
imagine the serious figures so gravely weighted, walk- 
ing up under their steeple-hats from Whitehall to 
Westminster, through narrow King Street, then back 
again with little respite, after the session at St. Ste- 
phen's was over. At the Council there were often 
present but few more than the quorum of nine, and 
seldom as many as twenty-five. 

On the 15th of March, John Milton was appointed 
" Secretary for Foreign Tongues " to the Council, his 
work being to conduct correspondence in the Latin 
language, then the diplomatic medium, to which was 
afterwards added the preparation of controversial 
pamphlets. Milton was now forty years old, and had 
just published the " Tenure of Kings and Magis- 
trates," which the " Defensio Populi Anglicani " was 
soon to follow. He was the first Englishman of 
mark who had adhered to the new order, and his fine 
powers and accomplishments were now put to use. 
He was invited immediately by the Committee of 
Alliances, one of the several into which the Council 
was divided, and of which Vane was a member. Mil- 
ton's home at this time was in High Holborn, near 
Great Turnstile, the back of the house opening upon 
Lincoln's Inn Fields, still so quiet and pleasant there 
in the heart of London, as one makes his way through 
the lawyers' quarters to Fetter Lane ; and it is quite 
probable, thinks Masson, that it was Vane who sought 
Milton out here, with news of his appointment. 

This was the machinery then at the centre with 



330 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1649. 

which a very extraordinary result was to be accom- 
plished. There has never been in the world finer 
leadership, never probably a finer military force, the 
forty-four thousand three hundred and seventy-three 
Ironsides, troopers and infantry seasoned in the 
fiercest campaigns. Without a moment's hesitation 
the work of firmly establishing freedom and toler- 
ance was. taken in hand. Nothing was done for re- 
venge. A few of the leading friends of Charles, 
whose lives could not with safety be spared, followed 
their royal master to the scaffold within a few weeks, 
among them the Duke of Hamilton, who had 
marched so proudly past Carlisle to meet his doom 
at Preston. More interesting was Lord Capel, the 
first man who in the Long Parliament rose to com- 
plain of the grievances inflicted by the King, a figure 
worthy to be placed by the side of Falkland. Like 
Falkland, though at first in the party of freedom, he 
had chosen dispiritedly the side of the King, as the 
least of the two evils, had fought desperately in the 
defence of Colchester, and made it impossible for 
the Honest Party to spare him. " He behaved much 
after the manner of a stout Roman. He had no 
minister with him, nor showed any sense of death 
approaching ; but carried himself all the time he was 
upon the scaffold with that boldness and resolution as 
was to be admired. He wore a sad-colored suit, his 
hat cocked-up, and his cloak thrown under one arm : 
he looked toward the people at his first coming up 
and put off his hat in manner of a salute ; he had a 
little discourse with some gentlemen, and passed up 
and down in a careless posture." 1 

1 Whitlocke, ii. 55, Oxford edition, 1853. 



1 649-] THE RUMP AGAINST THE WORLD. 33 1 

With the Levellers, the foes of their own house- 
hold, the Tolerationists dealt sternly but humanely. 
Whether or not they had in mind Roger Williams's 
parable, that though a ship's company may be al- 
lowed to pray as they like, they must not embarrass 
the working of the ship, and in case of danger must 
work manfully at the pumps, they acted in its spirit. 
Lilburne and his fellow-growlers were closely impris- 
oned ; and when in the Army a mutinous spirit exhib- 
ited itself dangerously, Fairfax, not yet retired, and 
Cromwell swept the discontent swiftly out of sight, 
with a little blood-letting and all possible tact 

When the dangers close at hand were disposed of, 
the remoter perils were instantly faced. Twelve thou- 
sand horse and foot were made ready for Ireland, and 
Cromwell was put at the head. It had now become 
vital to have an efficient fleet ; but while the Army 
was so formidable, the Navy scarcely existed. The 
sailors generally were for the King. Many had re- 
volted and carried their ships across to Charles II 
in Holland, while in the crews that remained disaffec- 
tion prevailed dangerously. How was a front to be 
made ? Rupert, now turned sailor, and equally enter- 
prising whether at the head of a squadron of horse 
or of men-of-war, hung threateningly in St. George's 
Channel. Charles II in Holland had a formidable 
fleet, to which at any moment might be added power 
from France or Spain. Almost the first act of the 
Council of State was to appoint three tried warriors, 
generals of the fleet, Popham, Dean, and most im- 
portant of all, the brave defender of Taunton in 1645, 
Robert Blake. Upon Vane's coming into the Coun- 



332 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1649. 

cil, he became, March 12th, a member of the Com- 
mittee for the Navy, and was at once the leading 
spirit, exhibiting forthwith a genius for administration 
which is perhaps the most impressive manifestation 
of his ability, and was a factor of immense weight in 
bringing about the most extraordinary triumphs re- 
corded in English history. Vane was also a member 
of the committee to " consider alliances," and hence- 
forth throughout the Commonwealth 1 was the fore- 
most man in all dealing with foreign powers, whether 
hostile or friendly. 

Another immensely important piece of work which 
Vane was set to do, was to determine the time when 
the babe could be taken out of its mother's keeping, 
when the fostering care of the Rump could be dis- 
pensed with, and the new constitution be committed 
to the guidance of a new Parliament; to determine 
also the details of the new order, which in Ireton's 
" Agreement of the People " had been only generally 
outlined. After some preliminary discussion, which 
Vane seems to have initiated and guided, on the 
13th of May, Vane, Ireton, Scott, Rich, Sidney, and 
four more were made a standing committee to " pre- 
sent heads to the House " proper for deliberation. 
Wednesdays and Fridays were the days set for their 
sessions, and henceforth through the Commonwealth 
this committee is anxiously at work, with Vane for 
chairman. Evidence abounds that he was constantly 
uneasy at the anomalous condition of affairs, and 

1 The Commonwealth, strictly Cromwell made himself autocrat 
speaking, may be regarded as ter- and established the Protectorate, 
minating April 20, 1653, when 



1649] THE RUMP AGAINST THE WORLD. 333 

anxiously looked forward to the time when the 
power could be given freely and fully to the People. 
Ireton was soon absorbed by service in the field at 
a distance. Vane, at the centre, was always present 
at the meetings of the Committee, and the dominant 
mind beyond all comparison. 

Following the Journal of the Commons and of the 
Council of State, one gets an idea of the intense and 
well applied energy of these resolute and able Com- 
monwealthsmen. The Commons' Journals are printed : 
the Order-Books of the Council of State remain still 
in manuscript in the Record Office in Fetter Lane 
in the handwriting of Gualter Frost, the secretary, 
the " draft " containing his jottings during the ses- 
sions, made while the discussions were sounding in 
his ears, — the " fair " containing his careful reduc- 
tion of the first notes, made at leisure after the ses- 
sion was concluded. It is, to be sure, but a meagre 
record, a noting of the orders, with little hint of the 
debates by which they must have been accompanied. 
But an air from the ancient rooms in Derby House 
and in Whitehall seems to blow upon the searcher, 
out of the books. The hand that wrote the faded 
lines had just before touched those of Cromwell, 
of Vane, or of Milton, — majestic presences sitting 
close at hand during the writing. The eyes of those 
men must have often followed down these pages, *as 
they refreshed their memories upon points of past 
business. As regards these Order-Books of the 
Council of State, the searcher is freed from one 
embarrassment that besets him in the case of the 
Order-Books of the Derby House Committee and 



334 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1649. 

that of the Two Kingdoms. There is now but one 
Sir Harry Vane. Old Sir Harry Vane, though still 
in Parliament, and bustling there, is no longer of the 
select Council. One must not forget, in speaking of 
these Order-Books, to mention the service to the 
searcher of the " Calendars," carefully prepared ab- 
stracts of the records, which give the clue to all that 
is most important in them. 

Attempting now to get some clear and close idea 
of young Sir Harry's life in these days, let the 
reader note the following things in the records of 
Parliament and Council, with a scrap now and then 
from elsewhere. On the 22d and 29th of January, 
1649, young Sir Harry Vane's name occurs as 
appointed on Parliamentary committees, and his 
name occurs also several times after, during the 
early days of February. 1 His own declaration that 
he was absent from the House for six weeks, has 
been quoted. Must we think that his colleagues still 
counted him, though absent, as one of them, and as- 
signed him business in anticipation of his return ? 
On the 2d of March, names of commanders for sev- 
eral ships are reported by him, among them that of 
Ascue, a famous officer afterward, and on the 5th, 
laws for the government of the Navy. On the 7th 
of March, the act for the abolishing of the King- 
ship, which though introduced earlier, as has been 
seen, had not yet been acted upon, is referred to a 
committee of which he is first ; and on the 24th of 
March, in the absence of the Speaker, Vane presides. 2 
While thus active in Parliament, Vane is also con- 

1 Journal of Commons, under dates. 2 Order-Book. 



1649] THE RUMP AGAINST THE WORLD. 335 

stantly present at the Council of State. His first 
appearance is on February 23d, and he is hence- 
forth almost unremitting, his record as to attendance 
being surpassed by only three others out of the 
forty-one members. On the 27th, with Cromwell, 
Marten, Jones, and Scott, he is appointed to arrange 
Army matters before the impending Irish Campaign, 
that all may go efficiently there, and at the same 
time be safe at home. On March 5th, he, with the 
Committee for the Affairs of the Admiralty and 
Navy, is to consider the expense of preparing the 
"St. George," "James," "Vanguard," " Swiftsure," 
" Rainbow," " Henrietta Maria," " Unicorn," and 
" Lion," and to see how soon they can be ready, 
" the generals of the fleet [Blake, Dean, and Pop- 
ham] to meet the Committee to-morrow for settling 
the above-mentioned affair." March 12th, comes the 
formal appointment of the Committee for the Navy, 
Sir Henry Vane, Colonel Warton, and Alderman 
Wilson being named " to sit daily on these affairs 
and to report to the Council." March 13th, Vane, 
Whitlocke, and others are constituted the Commit- 
tee on Alliances. Vane is mentioned as reporting 
the state of preparation of the ships, " with particu- 
lars where they were and when they would be ready ; 
also an estimate of the charges." At the end of 
March we find him on the Committee for Irish busi- 
ness, second on the list, with Cromwell third; and on 
the 27th of April, with his old colleague Sir William 
Armyne, of the days of the Solemn League and Cov- 
enant, also with Cromwell, and Lisle, he is " to con- 
sider in what condition we stand in reference to 



336 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1649. 

Scotland." April 9, Cromwell, Vane, and Alderman 
Wilson are appointed to treat with the Common 
Council of London for borrowing ^120,000 for the 
Irish Campaign. 1 April 23d, he is on a committee 
to confer with the Parliament concerning the export 
of gold and silver. May 18th, no doubt as leading 
member of the Committee on Alliances, he reports 
from the Council to Parliament the murder at the 
Hague of Dr. Dorislaus, the ambassador sent by the 
new government to Holland, who was stabbed at 
once upon arriving by refugee Royalists, at the Swan 
Inn. Again, on committees always, he sits " on the 
riots at York," on " the distemper at Oxford," " to 
consider how the price of coal for the poor may be 
brought down," " to consider as to the best manner 
of searching the lodgings of thieves." On July 28th, 
it is ordered " that the Trust formerlie exercised by 
ye M e of ye Ordnance of England bee putt into a 
Comittee of ye Councell [Vane one] and they are to 
use all possible dilligence to provide Armes, Amuni- 
con, and all other necessarie provisions of warre at 
equall and reasonable prices at Convenient dayes of 
payment for the service of this Comonwealth, and 
they are to consult with whom they shall think fitt 
for the better carrying on of this service." August 
23d, a note is dispatched to certain tardy agents ; 
" Sir Harry Vane wonders you should boggle in 
cutting elm timber in Theobald's park, as you are 
empowered thereto by Parliament, and wishes you 
to go in hand with speed." 

By reading on the yellow page such abbreviated 

1 Whitlocke, iii. IT. 



1 649] THE RUMP AGAINST THE WORLD. 337 

jottings, one gets some notion of the energy with 
which the stout hearts set to work at their task, and 
sees in the thick of everything Vane, busy about 
things large and small: the management of finances, 
the fitting out of hosts, as well as the sanitary con- 
dition of Oxford, — the hostile attitude of Scotland, 
Holland, and Ireland, as well as searching the lodg- 
ings of London thieves; above all he is busy with the 
making of a great Navy. Meantime, in July, the 
only man in the group to whom he stood second in 
power and influence, 1 Cromwell, departed with Ire- 
ton and his 12,000 troops for Ireland. They reached 
it in August. The story of that terrible campaign 
would here be out of place. Cromwell "showed no 
quarter in the name of ultimate mercy." 2 Royalism 
was dashed into insensibility as by a Titan's mace. 
For the Commonwealth the case was desperate, and 
they fought like desperate men. AH was sharp and 
sudden as by a bolt from heaven. The mighty 
Oliver was at home again in the following May, with 
his arm bare for further smiting. 

While the result of the Irish campaign was doubt- 
ful through the summer and fall, a heavy weight of 
anxiety hung over the little band whose post was 
at Westminster. It was rare for more than twelve 
to be present at the Council of State, and some- 
times there was barely a quorum : Parliament, too, 
dwindled; but both Parliament and Council increased 
and put on a bolder face as good tidings came in at 
last. In October, an " Engagement" was drawn up 

1 Ranke : History of England, iii. 75. Godwin, iii. 31. 

2 Masson, iv. 112. 



33§ YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1649. 

as follows : " I do declare and promise that I will be 
true and faithful to the Commonwealth of England 
as the same is established, without a King or a 
House of Lords." This was at first intended only 
for Parliament, but was extended until, from the be- 
ginning of the new year, its acceptance was required 
of all, as that of the Solemn League and Covenant 
had been required in the years before. The Com- 
mittee on Alliances, undeterred by the fate of Doris- 
laus, made constant effort to establish friendly rela- 
tions with foreign powers. For the ambassadors it 
was perilous employment; and Ascham at Madrid 
also fell under the daggers of Royalist refugees. 
Men, however, were found to go ; among others 
Charles Vane, a younger brother of Sir Harry, whose 
post was at Lisbon. To the great Committee for 
the Admiralty and Navy other members had been 
added, but Vane was more than ever here the guid- 
ing mind. I copy from the "draft" of Gualter Frost 
the following entry of December 4, which I decipher 
with some difficulty, as his pen tries to keep pace 
with the tongues of the Council busily wagging about 
him. 

"4 December 1649. That a ltr bee written to 
Coll. Blake to lett him know that this Council hath 
pitcht upon him as ye person whom they intend to 
send against P. Rupert which they have resolved 
here to ye end yt by their staying for their meeting 
together either in London or any place delayes may 
not be occasioned to let him know that hee is to re- 
side at Plymouth untill all things shall bee readie 
for his setting forth, and ye meane time ye Irish 



1 649-] THE RUMP AGAINST THE WORLD. 339 

squadron may doe service in ye Station to which 
they are appointed." Blake, as we have seen, had 
been selected for sea service, together with Dean 
and Popham, almost at once after the constituting 
of the Council. Since then he had been getting his 
sea-legs, an acquisition not exactly easy for him, one 
imagines, fifty-years-old landsman as he was, who 
never until now had set his foot upon a deck. His 
opportunity had not yet come, but was now not far 
off. 

Ever and anon in the midst of business immedi- 
ately pressing comes a hint that the work of settling 
the nation upon a better foundation is by no means 
forgotten. The committee, at the head of which 
stood Vane, charged to furnish " heads for discus- 
sion " with regard to what should be the constitution 
of the new Parliament, when at length the long 
wished -for time should arrive at which the Rump 
might safely lay down its responsibility, met often, 
though the notes of deliberations are unfortunately 
lost. As yet, plainly, the time had not come when 
a change could be made. 

So this first year of the Commonwealth, the lead- 
ing occurrence of which, after the beheading of 
Charles, is the great Irish campaign, draws to an 
end. England was under the Rump and the Coun- 
cil of State. " Two very compact bodies, but they 
grasped a world of business. In the MS. Order- 
Books of the Council of State for the period, and 
in the printed Journals of the Commons, what a 
mass of considering, debating, and deciding meets 
one, and over what a miscellany of topics ! Commu- 



34-0 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1650. 

nications with Cromwell, and constant care for sup- 
plies to him, in the first place; but how much be- 
sides! Private Bills and Public Bills; 1st, 2d, and 
3d readings of each. . . . Acts and Resolutions 
ranging over every possible subject, from the Propa- 
gation of the Gospel to the Customs of Sugar, Silks, 
Pepper, and Tobacco, and the protection of the 
home-trade in Hat-bands : such is the amazing 
medley. Always one sees Parliament in front and 
facing the public, but always the Council of State at 
the back, managing through manuscript and by re- 
ports and recommendations conveyed to the House." 1 
At home, disaffection was everywhere : abroad, there 
was no quarter of the compass from which storm 
did not threaten. With knitted brows and lips 
compressed the Independents faced it all. Milton 
having finished the " Tenure of Kings, and Magis- 
trates," wrote in his new office the " Iconoclastes," 
the image which he tried to break being the " Eikon- 
basilike," — that and the noble " Defensio Populi 
Anglicani." At the heart of all the effort, second 
only to Cromwell in power and prestige, is young Sir 
Harry Vane. 

1 Masson, iv. 1 14. 



CHAPTER XV. 

DUNBAR AND WORCESTER. 

The i 2th of February and one or two days follow- 
ing were occupied with the nomination of the new 
Council of State. Things were to continue under 
the old order. On the 9th of January, Vane, as chair- 
man of the Committee for determining the succes- 
sion of Parliaments, had reported a reform bill, 
recommending that the new House should be consti- 
tuted substantially upon Ireton's plan. Possibly he 
himself was ready to try the experiment of a change ; ' 
but after a debate of some days, the House resolved 
that the infant Moses must still be nursed by his own 
mother. Of the former Council, thirty-seven were 
re-elected, to whom five new names were added. 
One hundred and eight members were present in the 
House, the largest number since the execution of the 
King. The name of Old Sir Harry Vane was pro- 
posed, but he failed of election, — a fact over which 
the present biographer, mindful of the confusions 
sure to come about in Gualter Frost's record, desires 
to express his joy. February 23d, the oath of se- 
crecy was taken by the new Council, each in turn 
rising and reading the oath for himself in an audible 

1 Forster, Life of Vane, 307 etc. 



342 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1650. 

voice, while the rest sat uncovered. 1 Though the 
successes in Ireland had increased somewhat the at- 
tendance at Parliament, adherents to the present 
order came in slowly. The sailors, in especial, were 
ill-affected, only retained, so many thought, by high 
pay ; and it was regarded as very doubtful whether 
Blake and his fellows, who had blockaded Rupert in 
Kinsale, on the Irish coast, then afterwards followed 
him to the shore of Portugal, could ever bring their 
crews to fight the " revolted ships." Bradshaw de- 
clared that " with all the fair and foul means they 
could use, not one Cavalier was heartily converted 
to them ; " and according to the report of a Royalist 
which apparently had been intercepted on its way to 
the continent, Vane said to some one with whom he 
dined, " that they were in a far worse state than ever 
they have yet been ; that all the world was and 
would be their enemies ; that the Scots had left 
them, that their own Army and Generals were not 
to be trusted, that the whole kingdom would rise and 
cut their throats upon the first good occasion, and 
that they knew not any place to go to be safe." 2 
The untrustworthy General whom Vane had in mind 
may be believed to have been Lord Fairfax, who, 
always lukewarm since the coming in of the Rump, 
withdrew this year to await in private life the return 
of the Stuarts. What danger impended from the 
north, we must now consider. 

March 26th, the Council orders 3 that Sir Henry 
Vane and others " confer with the Lo. Generall about 

1 Green's Calendar, preface. s Order-Books : Draft. 

2 Ibid., May 10. 



1650.] DUNBAR AND WORCESTER. 343 

the present state of affairs and It him know what in- 
formations are received from Scotland, and of their 
readiness to invade England, and to comunicate to 
him what resolutions have been taken for a force to 
be ready to take the field. And to consider with his 
Lsp what place he may best be with some pt of these 
forces in order to look to the saftee of ye Comon- 
wealth against all impressions from any place what- 
soever that may be made upon it, and they are to ac- 
quaint him with what intelligence the Comonwealth 
has from any place concerning those affairs." " The 
committee that meets with the Lord generall " is full of 
business as the spring advances, at length on the 3d of 
May causing the Council to order the preparation 
of an army of 15,000 men for the Scotch Campaign, 
to consist of horse, foot, and dragoons. Through- 
out the month the jottings of Gualter Frost are 
fairly sulphurous with " Amunicon." " Backs, breasts, 
and potts x " are provided for a vast host of troopers : 
also, twenty thousand horse-shoes ; while " bandoleers, 
snaphances, pikes, and bullets," in adequate numbers 
are to be made ready for the foot. As Vane is first 
on the Army Committee of the Council, so he is first 
on the Navy Committee, which with equal particular- 
ity provides for the fleet and watches over all its 
action. " We appointed six new frigates to be built 
this summer, and for furnishing them with guns, 
have treated with Mr. Brown, the gun-founder, to 
furnish one hundred and eighty guns of such kind 
as upon Conference with the carpenters of those 
frigates and others, we have thought fitting." " The 

1 Headpieces. 



344 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1650. 

"Hart "frigate, being at Harwich, and most of her offi- 
cers being on shore, the company cut the cable and 
carried away the ship, which they are like enough to 
make use of to infest the seas and interrupt trade. 
We look upon this negligence as a very great breach 
of duty, for which they deserve to be proceeded 
against with all severity, for prevention of like at- 
tempts." An order follows to pursue and punish 
the mutineers. The sailors look to Vane's commit- 
tee to stop abuses. Popham writes to him from 
before Lisbon, where he is watching Rupert : " Our 
provisions fall out to be extremely bad ; of eight 
months beef and pork in this ship, there was not a 
fortnight's meat fit to eat: the 'Andrew' is the same, 
and that part of the victuals that was last provided 
at Plymouth. The victuallers send word they very 
much fear it, as it was saved in so hot a season of 
the year. I hope we shall make our provisions hold 
out as long as we shall be able to stay here, for we 
ride in the open sea just as we did at Kinsale, and 
when the winter comes on we must expect to be 
forced from hence. There is scarce a ship here but 
complains of some great defect or other, — masts, 
sails, and rigging, spent or wrong, and many of ex- 
traordinary leakage ; but the Lord, I hope, will carry 
us on through the work." * 

How could the prospect have been darker! In 
the nation, the vast majority secretly hostile ; in the 
Army, disaffection in the ranks and coolness in the 
high places ; in the Navy, mutinous crews upon un- 
seaworthy and ill-provisioned ships ; in the outside 

1 Green's Calendar. 



1650.] DUNBAR AND WORCESTER. 345 

world no friendly voice or hand ! If however in men 
like Vane and Bradshaw the heart sinks, it is not to 
a submergence under discouragement, but to a new 
level of stubborn resolution. 

Naturally, the friends of the young King saw little 
unpropitious in the skies, in spite of the victories at 
Dublin, Drogheda, and Wexford. Ireland for the 
time was lost to them, but Scotland was enthusiasti- 
cally Royalist. It had proclaimed Charles at once 
upon news of his father's death. Since then, Scottish 
emissaries had constantly besought him to trust him- 
self to them. June 23, he arrived in Scotland with a 
brilliant and hopeful retinue. Before landing, he won 
all by signing the Covenant, more than had been 
asked or expected of him. The Scottish Parliament 
appointed a great executive committee, at the head 
of which was Argyle, once the intimate of Cromwell 
and Vane, but now their foe. An army of 23,000 
was put in the field, at the head of which nominally 
was that same Earl of Leven who had fled so pre- 
maturely from Marston Moor. The real commander, 
however, w r as David Leslie, the splendid soldier who 
had saved Cromwell at the White Syke, and ruined 
Montrose at Philiphaugh. Cromwell was in Eng- 
land May 31. His army was ready for him, thanks 
to the Council of State. Backs, breasts, and potts 
were not wanting to the troopers. Bandolier, snap- 
hance, and pike were at hand for the foot. Before 
June had ended the twenty thousand horse-shoes 
were clattering northward, the infantry close at 
hand, the whole force pervaded with Cromwell's 
fierce enthusiasm. 



346 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1650. 

On July 22, the border was crossed, and the 1 1,000 
Ironsides faced 23,000 Scots. It was really far worse 
than at Preston. The odds, in the two cases, against 
the Independents were about equally great. Now, 
however, there was no such discord in the opposing 
host as had crippled Hamilton ; and David Leslie, 
able and cautious in strategy as he was vigorous in 
actual battle, was as formidable an opponent as the 
world could then furnish. Luckily for the good 
cause, he was impeded in his action by a committee 
of the Scottish Parliament and Kirk, whose wisdom 
in warfare was not at all proportioned to their zeal. 

Whoever goes northward to Edinburgh, following; 
the coast, traverses the scene of this very memorable 
campaign. The train takes you now quickly by 
Copperspath, a gorge then difficult, which Leslie 
blocked behind Cromwell, skilfully cutting off his 
retreat by land. From Arthur's Seat along the shore 
of the Frith of Forth to the ocean, the armies manoeu- 
vred, the crafty Scot, with headquarters in what is 
now the new town of Edinburgh, adhering to strong 
positions and refusing to be tempted to battle, while 
the invaders wore themselves out in vain marches and 
consumed their provisions. The Fabian policy was 
most effective ; and at the beginning of September, 
Cromwell, cooped up in Dunbar on the coast, depen- 
dent on ships in the offing for food, with the exulting 
Scots, more than twice his number, on advantageous 
ground close at hand, his own men dropping fast 
through sickness, had scarcely a foothold in the coun- 
try he had come to subdue. If he fell, the cause must 
fall. His great soul was never wrapped in deeper 



1650.] DUNBAR AND WORCESTER. 347 

shadow. Out of the gloom he thus wrote to Hasel- 
rig, not now at Westminster, but with sword on thigh 
at Newcastle, in command of the friendly garrison 
nearest to the men in danger. 

" To Sir Arthur Haselrig, Governor of Newcastle : 1 

These. 

" Dunbar, 2d September, 1650. 

Dear Sir — We are upon an engagement very 
difficult. The Enemy hath blocked up our way at 
the Pass at Copperspath, through which we cannot 
get without almost a miracle. He lieth so upon the 
Hills that we know not how to come that way with- 
out great difficulty ; and our lying here daily con- 
sumeth our men, who fall sick beyond imagination. 

I perceive, your forces are not in a capacity for 
present release. Wherefore, whatever becomes of 
us, it will be well for you to get what forces you can 
together ; and the South to help what they can. The 
business nearly concerneth all Good People. If your 
forces had been in a readiness to have fallen upon the 
back of Copperspath, it might have occasioned sup- 
plies to have come to us. But the only wise God 
knows what is best. All shall work for Good. Our 
spirits are comfortable, praised be the Lord — though 
our present condition be as it is. And indeed we 
have much hope in the Lord ; of whose mercy we 
have had large experience. 

Indeed do you get together what forces you can 
against them. Send to friends in the South to help 
with more. Let H. Vane know what I write. I 

1 Carlyle. 



348 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1650. 

would not make it public, lest danger should accrue 
thereby. You know what use to make hereof. Let 
me hear from you. I rest, 

Your servant, 

Oliver Cromwell." 

" Let H. Vane know what I write." Vane, then, 
was the one man in England to whom Cromwell 
could turn at such a time to rally forces for his suc- 
cor; or, in case of his destruction, to gather what 
strength remained for another effort. 

Who can read the story of Dunbar, Carlyle has 
told it for all time, without a quicker drawing of the 
breath ! The fatal coming of the Scots from the 
high Doon Hill into the low ground, watched by 
Cromwell and Lambert from the garden of Brocks- 
mouth House : the hasty counselling between them 
and Monk, as darkness comes on : the perception 
of the mistake which Leslie declared was due to the 
meddling of the civilians by whom his action was 
hampered : the resolve to profit by it with the first 
gray of dawn : the waiting through the night, while 
" the hoarse sea moans bodeful, swinging low and 
heavy against those whinstone bays ; the sea and the 
tempests are abroad, all else asleep but we, and there 
is One that rides on the wings of the wind." The 
moment arrives. " The moon gleams out, hard and 
blue, riding among hail-clouds ; and over St. Abb's 
Head, a streak of dawn is rising. . . . The trumpets 
peal, the cannons awaken all along the line : ' The 
Lord of Hosts ! The Lord of Hosts ! ' On, my brave 
ones, on ! " Lambert led the headlong charge. Monk 



1650.] DUNBAR AND WORCESTER. 349 

had his share, and sturdy Pride purged in his own 
fashion a good bit of Scotch hillside till it was as 
clean of Presbyterians as the benches of the House 
of Commons. Whalley, with his horse slain, and cut 
in the wrist, was in the fore-front; so, too, the man 
destined afterward to be his companion in his Amer- 
ican exile, the Regicide Goffe, who, this day, led 
Cromwell's own regiment of foot, and bore himself 
valiantly. More total overthrow was never known. 
Three thousand were slain ; ten thousand captured, 
thirty cannon, two hundred colors, fifteen thousand 
arms. Cromwell declared in his report to Parliament, 
" I do not believe we have lost twenty men." " The 
Lord-general made a halt and sang the CXVIIth 
Psalm, till our horse could gather for the chase. 
There we uplift it and roll it strong and great 
against the sky. 

' O give ye praise unto the Lord, 

All nati-ons that be ; 
Likewise ye people all, accord 

His name to magnify. 
For great to-us-ward ever are 

His loving kindnesses ; 
His truth endures for evermore : 

The Lord O do ye bless.' " 

The two hundred banners, dispatched to London, 
were hung in Westminster Hall, by the side of the 
banners taken' at Preston. As the anxious watchers 
in Parliament and in the Council, with the mob of 
London scarcely held down about them by Skippon, 
received and hung up the trophies, won not simply 
by the prowess of the soldier, but by the work of 
the administrators who had recruited, trained, armed, 



350 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1650. 

and fed him, who will deny to them the right to feel 
exultation, and to claim that they, too, had a part in 
the glory of the almost miraculous field of Dunbar! 

Vane was in Cromwell's thoughts in his joy as 
well as his distress. September 4th the glorious 
soldier wrote to his wife : " My Dearest, I have not 
leisure to write much. But I could chide thee that 
in many of thy letters thou writest to me, that I 
should not be unmindful of thee and thy little ones. 
Truly, if I love you not too well, I think I err not 
on the other side much. Thou art dearer to me 
than any creature ; let that suffice. The Lord hath 
showed us an exceeding mercy : who can tell how 
great it is ! My weak faith hath been upheld. I 
have been in my inward man marvellously sup- 
ported ; — though I assure thee I grow an old man, 
and feel infirmities of age marvellously stealing upon 
me. Would my corruptions did as fast decrease ! 
Pray on my behalf in the latter respect. The par- 
ticulars of our late success Harry Vane, or Gilbert 
Pickering will impart to thee. My love to all dear 
friends. I rest thine. Oliver Cromwell." 1 

The note implies that Vane was intimate in Crom- 
well's home. Pickering was his associate in the 
Council of State, and both wmild thus be in posses- 
sion of the full tidings which had been sent from the 
field. One can suppose the countenance of Vane, 
so severely grave in his portrait as if it seldom had 
anything to face but terrible peril and difficulty, soft- 
ening into smiles as he talked with the wife of his 
dear friend about the marvellous deliverance which 
the Lord had granted to her husband and the cause. 

1 Carlyle. 



1650.] DUNBAR AND WORCESTER. 35 I 

In spite of Dunbar, it was far from being the case 
that all danger was over. The defeated chiefs of the 
Scots withdrew northward with the wreck of their 
army and the young King. Though they left the 
Lowlands to the invaders, they held the North, and 
with true Scotch grit strengthened and reorganized 
their force for further resistance. In the winter 
Cromwell fell ill, remaining disabled for the most 
part until June, his condition being such at times 
that the gravest fear was felt. The wars had devel- 
oped a company of splendid captains. Though Fair- 
fax was in retirement, Ireton was in Ireland; old 
Skippon still was well able to cope with disaffection 
in London ; Harrison with fine capacity kept Eng- 
land in order; while with Cromwell himself, Lambert, 
Monk, and Fleetwood were as intrepid and skilful as 
the lieutenants who at a later time surrounded the 
great Corsican, perhaps the only peer of the Puritan 
hero. All felt, however, that Cromwell could not be 
spared. The strong man, sick wellnigh unto death 
at Edinburgh, was the object of heart-felt praying in 
the ranks of the Ironsides and everywhere among 
the Honest Party. All was likely to go wrong if he 
were lost. 

Though Dunbar had made impression abroad, no 
substantial friends were as yet won. Friendship 
with Holland was especially desired. In a portion 
of Holland sympathy with the Independents was 
strong. There, too, toleration was cherished — there, 
indeed, it had been born ; there, too, was a Republic, 
and aspirations for popular freedom were ardent. 
The Stadtholder, however, was son-in-law of the 



352 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1651. 

beheaded Charles ; and he and his party, the Orange 
faction, were hostile to the Commonwealth, shelter- 
ing Charles II, and suffering Holland to be used as 
the base whence England might be assailed. Just 
here the Stadtholder died, and the Commonwealth, 
believing the time favorable, sent a magnificent em- 
bassy to the Hague, in the hope of making a close 
bond with their neighbor state. 1 Cromwell and 
Vane had early entertained as bold a thought as this, 
of making a firm union between the two countries. 
" Faciamus eas in gentem imam" was a phrase used 
in their intimate communications with the Dutch 
leaders. St. John, now chief justice of the Common 
Pleas, who had taken little part in public life since 
1648, was selected to be the principal figure of the 
mission, and the public resources were strained to 
produce an imposing effect. St. John and his asso- 
ciate, Strickland, in the spring entered the Hague 
with a train requiring twenty-seven coaches, while 
two hundred and forty-six attendants followed on 
foot. Everything possible was said and done to 
conciliate friends. There was no good result : the 
coaches were hooted in the streets, the windows of 
the Englishmen were broken, scuffles took place be- 
tween their servants and the people. The envoys 
themselves feared assassination. Refugee English 
Royalists were, indeed, the leaders, but the Orange 
party abetted them ; and even the Republican Dutch 
were not ready for an alliance which should unite 
the two countries. After three months' effort the 
envoys left in June, St. John declaring ominously : 

1 Godwin, iii. 372 etc. 



i6si.] DUNBAR AND WORCESTER. 353 

" He saw they were waiting to see how Scotland would 
come out. Cromwell would soon finish that ; then 
they would be sorry at having rejected the offers." 

Cromwell was indeed once more in the saddle in 
June, and things were pressed ; but the young King, 
at bay in the North, could not be reached. A stout 
army encircled him, and among the chiefs were not 
only David Leslie, but other good soldiers, Cavaliers, 
as well as the Covenanters who in the earlier time had 
won fame fighting for the Houses. At length, while 
Cromwell was working hard to get at them from the 
flank, a bold move was put into execution by the Scots 
which apparently surprised him, and which perhaps 
only he could have successfully met. Breaking sud- 
denly from his fastness, the King with all his host 
rushed southward for England, leaving Cromwell 
far behind. War was to be carried into Africa. It 
was the last day of July, and in less than a week a 
great force, far more dangerous than the army of 
Hamilton three years before, was pouring past Car- 
lisle by the old road into Cumberland, Westmore- 
land, and Lancashire. Far and wide the country 
was summoned to the side of the King. A thrill 
went through the heart of each old Cavalier, — of 
every stubborn Presbyterian also, who hated the rule 
of the Sectaries with its toleration inspired of the 
Devil, — of every Catholic, who saw in Charles the 
son of the Catholic Henrietta, and could reason- 
ably hope that a turn in the King's favor would 
brino: out £ood for Rome. From the North the 
King swept fast into the Midlands. There was no 
power to resist him. The King had " come to enjoy 



354 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1651. 

his own again." The disaffection, held down only 
through fear, was seething everywhere. On August 
2 2d, three weeks only from distant Stirling, Charles, 
20,000 strong, marched into the city of Worcester. 
But the King's host had anxieties. 

Down through the same summer landscape, how- 
ever, by parallel roads, swift as if their feet were 
winged, had poured the Ironsides. Through Ber- 
wick, southward, a pause beneath the walls of York, 
past Nottingham, till the three spires of Coventry 
pricked the sky before them ; then at Warwick cut- 
ting the road along which the Roundheads nine 
years before had marched to Edgehill. The King 
had been in Worcester but a week, when the pickets 
reported Cromwell at hand with 30,000 men. It 
was well that Cromwell's host was strong, for the 
Council of State had word at this time that a force 
in aid of the King from Holland, under the Duke of 
Lorraine, was expected on the coast of Suffolk. 1 On 
the eve of the " Crowning Mercy " of Worcester, let 
us look as;ain at the Order Books of the Council of 
State. 

In a struggle so earnest as that which the Inde- 
pendents were waging, one naturally wonders whence 
came the sinews for such a war. The Common- 
wealth was a liberal paymaster. From Cromwell, 
who in the Irish campaign demanded ,£8,000 besides 
the usual Lord Lieutenant's salary, down to the crews 
of the fleet, the Council took care that all useful ser- 
vants should be handsomely salaried; and the man- 
agement of the finances was, as always, a matter of 

1 Bisset, vol. ii. 183 etc. 



1 65 1.] DUNBAR AND WORCESTER. 355 

the highest moment. The sources of revenue, be- 
sides the ordinary taxes, and the excise which had 
been established by Pym, were the compositions of 
Royalists, and sequestrations of property owned by 
them and by the Church. Malignants were fined 
heavily, and in the case of obstinate Cavaliers, whole- 
sale confiscation took place. The Crown lands, those 
belonging to other members of the royal family, the 
lands and revenues of Bishops, Deans, and Chapters, 
were unsparingly taken. Small respect was shown 
to the Cathedrals : their roofs were stripped of lead 
and copper, and if the stones could have brought a 
price, the Puritan would have been restrained as lit- 
tle by any regard for art, as he was by any sentiment 
of reverence, from levelling them all to the ground. 
The timber of the royal parks went into the hulls 
that Vane was building for Blake ; and the parks 
themselves, if Vane could have had his way, would 
have gone, as we shall see, to help the cause. The 
exactions of resources from dissentients was often 
rude enough : in the circumstances, however, it can- 
not be charged that there was rapacity, and there 
is little evidence of a misappropriation of means to 
private ends. 

Vane, from the opening of the Commonwealth, 
seems to have been scarcely less at the front in finan- 
cial management than elsewhere. Business was al- 
ways done by committees, the wish being, as has been 
before stated, to avoid in such critical times per- 
sonal responsibility. In connection with any impor- 
tant financial act, several names are given in the 
Order Books with that of Vane ; but knowing, as the 



356 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1651. 

reader does by this time, how the leadership of the 
man always asserted itself, in whatever circle he 
stood, no one can doubt that here, too, his influence 
was paramount. At once upon the formation of the 
Council, April 23, '49, he is one of the committee 
to confer with Parliament about the exportation of 
gold and silver; and he goes, as we have seen, to 
the city to negotiate a loan for the Irish exigencies. 
Next year, April 13th, when the campaign of Dunbar 
is preparing, Vane reports to Parliament the want of 
money for carrying on the weighty affairs of the 
Commonwealth, and desires as a thing absolutely 
necessary an order for its provision, to supply the 
present strait ; again, in August, he is deputed to stir 
up Parliament for a supply of money for Cromwell, 
and is constantly active in the sequestration of Church 
lands. 

For the Ordnance and for the Army Vane is also in 
the foreground ; thought, too, is given to small affairs, 
the bringing of water from Hyde Park to White- 
hall, and the restraining of the resort of people to the 
houses of ambassadors, to hear mass. Before Wor- 
cester, the Order Books give evidence of much anx- 
iety in the Council, and during the long period when 
Cromwell lay ill, of careful provision against danger 
from Charles, still unconquered in the North. Vane 
is at the front, in fact, in all management of martial 
affairs, his committee, on January 1 3th, taking "speedy 
account of the militia in England and Wales before 
danger from the North," and February 10th, being ap- 
pointed to confer with Harrison, commanding south 
of the border, " concerning the suppression of those 



1 65 1.] DUNBAR AND WORCESTER. 357 

in arms in Yorkshire." March 1st, he is not only first 
on the Naval Committee, but also first on that " for 
the affairs of Ireland and Scotland : " on the 3d he is 
added to the " Committee which meets with the offi- 
cers of the Army; " and on the 15th receives a report 
from Lambert, apparently conveying secret intelli- 
gence. April 7th, " So much of the Ld generall's let- 
ter to Sir Hen. Vane as concerns the draught-horses 
and a further supply of hay, referred to the Irish and 
Scotch Committee." On the 13th of June, Vane, for 
the Council, writes a grateful message to " Dr. God- 
dard, for the care by him shown in Cromwell's sick- 
ness ; " and on August 13th, he receives a letter from 
Cromwell, then on his forced march southward after 
the King. Just before the battle of Worcester the 
Council is all alive with preparations, plainly in great 
fear of a general rising in the King's favor, which no 
doubt was thoroughly well-grounded. 

A somewhat curious scrap of correspondence be. 
tween Vane and Cromwell belongs to these disturbed 
days, which indicates that although Sir Harry's grap- 
ple with the sternest facts was at this time so fierce 
and constant, yet he found time for the abstruse mus- 
ings of which he was fond — a strange predilection 
in one who had such a grasp of the practical, a side 
of his character which must be hereafter illustrated. 
Cromwell seems to have been dazed, like his contem- 
poraries generally, and like the after-world, in fact, 
by Vane's unintelligibilities. Calling Oliver " Brother 
Fountain," and himself " Brother Heron," names as- 
sumed for their familiar intercourse, while Cromwell 
is in the midst of the fret and sweat of his forced 



358 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1651. 

march, after the Scots had eluded him, 1 Vane writes, 
August 2d. " Brother Fountain can guess at his 
brothers meaning," he says, referring to troubles in 
the Council of State, and begging him not to believe 
ill-natured reports as to Brother Heron. Be "assured 
he answers your heart's desire in all things, except he 
be esteemed, even by you, in principles too high to 
fathom ; which one day, I am persuaded will not be 
so thought by you, when by increasing with the in- 
creasings of God, you shall be brought to that sight 
and enjoyment of God in Christ which passes knowl- 
edge." 

For a short time there is little mention of Sir 
Harry in the records, and we may suppose that he 
was overcome by illness, as in the summer of Preston. 
How much his presence was missed, this note of the 
Council shows, of August 18 : " In the present state 
of affairs, your presence and assistance would be very 
useful. Repair hither with what speed you may." 
His absence cannot have been long, for on the 2 2d 
he is sent by the Council, with Whitlocke, to the 
wife of Popham, " to condole with her on the loss of 
her husband," who had died while in service ; and 
September 1st, he reports to Parliament "letters con- 
taining news and intelligence." 

How stern was Vane's fibre is indicated by an 
event of this summer. Evidence was discovered in 
Scotland of a correspondence between the King and 
certain London Presbyterians, ministers and laymen, 
most prominent among whom was the Rev. Chris- 
topher Love, the young and popular minister of St. 

1 Milton Papers, by Nickolls, pp. 78, 79, quoted by Masson, vi. 22. 



1651.] DUNBAR AND WORCESTER. 359 

Lawrence Jewry. They were at once arrested by the 
Council of State, and condemned to death. Love's 
case excited great interest : he was eloquent and de- 
voted, and the most moving petitions poured in for 
his life. He had been active in the conspiracy, his 
house having been the meeting-place ; but Parliament 
was nearly equally divided. To the strong disposition 
to treat leniently the pulpit favorite, was opposed the 
conviction that in some way the Presbyterian clergy 
must be struck with terror, and of this sentiment 
Vane was the leader. Upon a division as to whether 
he should have a respite for a month, Vane was a 
teller for the negative, a fact showing his interest in 
the matter. By a narrow majority the respite was 
granted, but Vane pressed the necessity of severity. 
Cromwell was strongly urged to intercede, and Vane, 
about July 22d, writes to oppose it. He is daily con- 
firmed in his opinion that Love and his brethren " do 
still retain their old leaven," disingenuously working 
on the weak side of the government to escape with- 
out any pledge to the Commonwealth, and to be at 
full liberty still to treat it as an unlawful magistracy. 
They are calculating much on Cromwell, making 
sure that he will cast his influence on the side of 
clemency against " brother Heron who is taken for 
a back friend to the Black Coats." Vane's policy 
prevailed. Love was executed August 2 2d, the very 
day the King entered Worcester. 

The great figure in all these scenes is the mighty 
Oliver no doubt. His sword lightens and smites, 
and the foe is scattered. But even to an Oliver are 
necessary those behind, who shall prepare and store 



360 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1651. 

the power which he is to discharge, and in the fore- 
front of these always and everywhere is Vane. After 
the hot fights we have witnessed, Worcester, Sep- 
tember 3d, anniversary of Dunbar, was but child's- 
play. There was no general uprising, for woe thrice- 
told was threatened by the Commonwealth, ranked 
and pitiless : the Scots were disheartened and out- 
numbered ; the day was shortly decided. For the 
last time on English soil that day the Ironsides smote 
in wrath. Here and there a fugitive, one of them 
the young King, escaped. For the most part, at 
nightfall the invaders were slain or captive. The 
host of the Duke of Lorraine, expected from Hol- 
land, never appeared. What private message may 
have gone from Vane to his heart's brother in that 
hour of triumph, that " Crowning Mercy," which 
established the good cause, we do not know. That 
Vane poured out his soul may well be believed, and 
also that he sought Elizabeth, Cromwell's tenderly 
loved wife, with all the splendid details of her hus- 
band's triumph. On September 9th, as leader of the 
Council of State, he reports for the commissioners 
sent by Parliament to the Lord General, the follow- 
ing instructions : * — 

" You are, in the name of the Parliament, to con- 
gratulate his lordship's good recovery of health, 
after his dangerous sickness ; and to take notice of 
his unwearied labors and pains in the late expedi- 
tion into Scotland, for the service of this Common- 
wealth ; of his diligence in prosecution of the enemy, 
when he fled into England; of the great hardships 

1 Commons Journal. 



r 65i.] DUNBAR AND WORCESTER. 36 1 

and hazards he hath exposed himself unto, and par- 
ticularly in the late fight at Worcester; of the pru- 
dent and faithful managing and conducting through- 
out this great and important affair which the Lord 
from heaven hath so signally blessed & crowned 
with so complete and glorious an issue : of all which 
you are to make known to his lordship, the Parlia- 
ment have thought fit by you, to certify their good 
acceptance and great satisfaction therein : and for 
the same you are to return in the name of the Par- 
liament and Commonwealth of England, their most 
hearty thanks : as also to the rest of the officers and 
soldiers, for their great and gallant services done to 
this Commonwealth. You are likewise to let his 
lordship know, that since by the great blessing of 
God upon his lordship's and the army's endeavors, 
the enemy is so totally defeated, and the state of 
affairs as well in England as Scotland, such as may 
very well dispense with his lordship's continuance in 
the field, they do desire his lordship for the better set- 
tlement of his health, to take such rest and repose as 
he shall find most requisite and conducing thereto : 
and for that purpose to make his repair to and resi- 
dence at, or near this place ; whereby also the Par- 
liament may have the assistance of his presence in 
the great and important consultation for the further 
settlement of the Commonwealth which they are now 
upon." 

While Cromwell had been gaining the victory 
of Worcester, Monk, whom he had left behind in 
Scotland, had so thoroughly subdued the enemies of 
the Commonwealth left in the North, that no foe 



362 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1651. 

remained in Great Britain. Ireton in October, by the 
capture of Limerick, demolished the last Irish strong- 
hold. The Commonwealth was embarrassed with 
its good fortune. What to do with the thousands of 
prisoners, among whom were the most distinguished 
of their opponents, was a question difficult to settle. 
Magnanimity was at once shown. But three were 
executed ; and although some of the soldiers were 
sent as convict laborers to the collieries and fens, 
and, still harder, to the West Indies and West Afri- 
can coast, most of these, as well as of those higher 
in station, were suffered at last to return on easy 
conditions to their homes. Measures were taken to 
incorporate Scotland with the Commonwealth, a 
committee of eight being appointed to adjust the 
details, among whom, beside the brilliant soldiers 
Lambert, Monk, and Dean, who under Cromwell 
had been the main instruments of the subjugation, 
were St. John and Vane. It was no small conde- 
scension, thinks Godwin, 1 that Vane and St. John were 
on this committee. The Order Books show that 
Vane was placed September 16th on the committee 
" to have power to dispose to plantations all the pris- 
oners and field officers;" and also, October 1st, on 
the committee to report on what footing the Army 
should be placed. Before the Commissioners to 
Scotland could depart, there was other important 
business that must be noted. 

Let the reader recall here Ireton's " Agreement of 
the People," that admirable summary which, antici- 
pating so remarkably the reforms already gained and 

1 Hist, of Common, iii. 319. 



1651.] DUNBAR AND WORCESTER. 363 

still in progress in England, and also all that is most 
essential in the American system, gave voice there 
in the seventeenth century to the Republicanism 
that had at last fought its way to the top. Just here, 
in the hour of triumph, Ireton, ablest and most stal- 
wart of the Ironsides, died of the plague in Ireland. 
We saw him first breasting Rupert's charge at 
Naseby till crippled by desperate wounds. Since 
then he has become Cromwell's confidant, adviser, 
bosom-friend, at last the husband of his daughter 
Bridget, and entrusted with the most difficult com- 
mand except that which Oliver reserved for himself. 
To speculate on what might have been is always futile, 
but it is reasonable to think that if Ireton could have 
survived Cromwell, his fine powers and immense 
authority among the Puritans might have brought 
to pass a better consummation than the Restoration. 
His death, in the midst of magnificent services, in 
the prime of his manhood, was a great blow to the 
Commonwealth, which he had such an influence in 
shaping. The house of Ireton, at Highgate, in 
North London, remains largely as he left it. Crom- 
well is said to have built it for him, and the apart- 
ments are curiously marked with the Cromwellian 
impress. Martial emblems stand out in relief from 
ceiling and chimney-piece, but finest is the massive 
staircase of oak in the centre of the house. The 
dark timbers are ruggedly hewn in various places 
with the symbols of war, and each post of the bal- 
ustrade is surmounted by a figure ^representing 
a Roundhead soldier. Pikeman, musketeer, and 
drummer, — trumpeter and dragoon, — ensign and 



364 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1651. 

halberdier, — there stand the Ironsides, capped and 
corseleted, booted and spurred, carved out of their 
kindred oak under the eye of the mighty leader who 
called them into being. In the home thus decorated, 
Cromwell is said often to have sojourned with his 
daughter, and the man who is believed to have been 
the closest neighbor to his purpose. Upon Ireton's 
sumptuous interment in Westminster Abbey, rugged 
Ludlow poured out above him a comrade's tribute 
in terms which have something of the heavy roll of 
a volley of honor. 

" If he could have foreseen what was done by 
them, he would certainly have made it his desire that 
his body might have found a grave where his soul 
left it, so much did he despise those pompous and 
expensive vanities, having erected for himself a more 
glorious monument in the hearts of good men, by 
his affection to his country, his abilities of mind, his 
impartial justice, his diligence in the public service, 
and his other virtues, which were a far greater honor 
to his memory than a dormitory amongst the ashes 
of Kings." l 

The great matter of doing away with the anoma- 
lous government and committing the country to a 
new Parliament, constituted on the general scheme 
of Ireton's Agreement of the People, had never been 
lost sight of. Vane had been all along the leading 
spirit of the committee, constituted at the outset of 
the Rump, for considering how Moses might best be 

1 Memoirs, i. 384. Ludlow succeeded Ireton in the command in 
Ireland. 



1651.] DUNBAR AND WORCESTER. 365 

taken out of his mother's care and put upon his own 
feet. On January 9, 1650, he makes the commit- 
tee's first report, but, as we have seen, it was felt 
that in the midst of so turbulent and deep a stream, 
horses could by no means be swapped. In the year 
that followed, the committee met more than fifty 
times, nothing decisive being done. September 16, 
1 65 1, Cromwell appeared in Parliament for the first 
time for two years, and at once announced his ear- 
nest desire for a new Parliament and popular rep- 
resentation. In this, some writers 1 think he acted 
with great duplicity, having already determined for a 
selfish purpose upon making himself supreme ruler. 
Others hold 2 that his sincerity here was perfect, as 
always, but that Vane's committee from the begin- 
ning had weakly paltered. A truer interpretation of 
the case is, that Vane and his friends were thor- 
oughly in earnest, and did all that at the time could 
be done, — that Cromwell too was equally honest 
and earnest. The committee invited the help of 
the great soldier whose weight now was so potent, 3 
and all cooperated most heartily in trying to reach a 
decision. The outcome, November 18, after much 
debate, was, that " the time for the continuance of 
this Parliament, beyond which they resolve not to 
sit, shall be the 3d of November, 1654." There 
should be no haste ; the disturbed country should be 
fully settled ; the jarring parties should be concil- 

1 Forster, Vane, 310. Godwin, Vane's instructions to the Com- 
iii. 304, 305. mittee for congratulating the Lord 

2 Carl vie, ii. 7. General after Worcester, p. 361. 
8 See concluding sentence of 



366 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1652. 

iated to each other ; the details of the new polity 
should all be carefully arranged ; — all this before 
the great step was taken. 

Next day, for the third time, a Council of State 
was elected, the term of the Council for 1651 ex- 
piring by agreement December 1, instead of going 
on until February. Cromwell was elected unani- 
mously, Vane nearly so. Robert Blake, now grow- 
ing famous, was among the twenty new members 
among the forty-one. Bradshaw, for three years 
President, ceased now to be so, it being arranged 
that henceforth no member should be president for 
more than one month. This having been accom- 
plished, Vane departed with his fellows for Scotland, 
one hopes finding some relief and recreation in the 
northern journey. The business of incorporation 
was managed with humanity and wisdom. Many of 
the Scotch acquiesced with cordiality in the meas- 
ure as the best issue practicable out of the troubles ; 
but most, probably, felt with the Rev. Mr. Blair of 
St. Andrews : " As for the embodying of Scotland 
with England, it will be as when the puir bird is 
embodied into the hawk that hath eaten it up." 1 
March 1 6th, Vane, evidently just returned, reports 
to Parliament the proceedings of the committee. 2 

In the Council of State, seven great standing Com- 
mittees performed the business : Ordnance, Admi- 
ralty and Navy, Ireland and Scotland, Examinations 
and Informations, Conference with Army-Officers, 
Law, and the Mint. The prominent men served on 
two or more of these Committees. We have seen 

1 Masson, iv. 363. 2 Journal of Commons. 



1652.] DUNBAR AND WORCESTER. 367 

that in the previous years Vane's activity was not at 
all circumscribed : so at present. The Order-Books 
show that there was no direction in which his aid 
was not rendered. Parliament still continued small, 
the Long Parliament diminished to scarcely more 
than a tenth of the five hundred who had gathered 
at Westminster in 1640, though upon occasions of 
unusual interest more than a hundred could be con- 
vened. One may trace an uneasy feeling in both 
Council and Parliament under the' great overshadow- 
ing personality that was now always close at hand. 
Cromwell's work as a soldier was done, one of the 
most extraordinary accomplishments of the sword 
since the world began. For the time being he min- 
gled little in public business, moving about White- 
hall, sometimes in soldier's dress, more often as an 
ordinary citizen in dark doublet and breeches and 
gray worsted stockings. If he looked into the Coun- 
cil Chamber, or sat down for a time " in an ordinary 
place as was his wont," in St. Stephen's, there was 
a flutter of deferential courtesy at his coming and 
going. He did little more than observe, while others 
acted. February 25th, a general amnesty was pro- 
claimed for all treasons committed up to the date 
of the battle of Worcester, the sole condition being 
the signing of an engagement " to be faithful to the 
Commonwealth as now established without King or 
House of Lords." Before such magnificent successes 
accompanied by such leniency, even Royalists began 
to doubt whether the Stuarts were essential to Eng- 
land, and adhesions to the Commonwealth became 
numerous. 



368 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1652. 

Victory made vast impression abroad as well as at 
home. The Independent cannon had been heard on 
sea as well as land : Blake had shattered Rupert and 
shown himself with threatening broadsides in many 
a foreign port. The northern powers, Sweden at 
the head, had grown obsequious : Portugal became 
deferential, and Spain sought alliance : France, weak- 
ened by the Fronde, deprecated hostility : Holland 
felt the force of St. John's threat at the close of his 
unsuccessful mission of the previous year, followed up 
as it soon was by a noteworthy act of aggression, 
presently to be described. In the lull of conflict, 
attempts at a better order were made by Parliament 
in various directions. Law reforms were under- 
taken. The Army in particular, as Whitlocke puts 
it, had a " peek " at lawyers, and found a blunt spokes- 
man in old Pride, who had been heard " to wish, and 
almost to hope, that the lawyers gowns might all be 
hung up beside the Scots colors yet [the Preston 
and Dunbar trophies in Westminster Hall], and the 
lawyers selves, except some very small and most se- 
lect needful remnant, be ordered peremptorily to dis- 
appear from those localities and seek an honest trade 
elsewhere ! " l 

Very interesting was the scheme presented by 
Independent ministers in February for a State 
Church, much less formal than Presbyterianism, and 
with a limited toleration for dissenters. That there 
should be any limitation to toleration, or any State 
Church, anything but absolute Voluntaryism, seemed 
to some an outrage, among others to Cromwell and 

1 Carlyle, i. 471, 472. 







THE GREAT SEAL OF THE COMMONWEALTH. 



Note. This seal presents as Sovereign of England, not the figure of a King, but the Parliament in 
session in St. Stephen's. The design and motto are said, upon the authority of Whitlocke, to have been 
furnished by Henry Marten. 



1652.] DUNBAR AND WORCESTER. 369 

Vane, the former of whom declared, " he had rather 
that Mahometanism were permitted among us, than 
that one of God's children among us should be per- 
secuted." A protest was made against the plan for 
a State Church, liberal as it was as compared with all 
previous schemes, and this protest is believed 1 to 
have been written by no other than the American, 
Roger Williams. He was now again in England, 
much with Vane at his house in Charing Cross, and 
hand in glove with him and all the more advanced 
spirits of the time. His " Bloudy Tenent " ten years 
before had been one of the first announcements of 
the Tolerationists. At this time he followed it 
up with the " Bloudy Tenent yet more Bloudy by 
Mr. Cotton's Endeavour to wash it clean &c," and 
the " Hireling Ministry." Charles Vane, Henry's 
younger brother, also a noted man in those days, was 
prominent in making the protest. We find young 
Sir Henry himself trying to shield the Catholics 2 
from persecution, and also Unitarians. 3 His own 
strange, unintelligible faith, hereafter to be referred 
to, was as far from the one as the other, but liberty 
of conscience had become with him more than ever 
a cardinal principle. 

1 Masson, iv. 397 note. ' Lingard, xi. pp. 137, 179. 

8 Case of Biddle, Godwin, iii. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

BLAKE AND VAN TROMP. 

The lull in the battle-storm was but short. The 
Commonwealth was to test its strength in a foreign 
war, a wrestle of the fiercest, to which we must now 
turn. St. John, returning unsuccessful from Hol- 
land, was the main aoent through whom Parliament 
was induced to pass the " Act of Navigation," a fa- 
mous measure which affected English history for 
two hundred years, and which had an important re- 
lation to events in our own Revolutionary War. The 
provisions of the act briefly were that all products 
from foreign lands should be conveyed to England 
either in British ships or ships of the country pro- 
ducing the merchandise. It was a heavy blow at the 
commerce of Holland, which at that time, while pro- 
ducing little, possessed the carrying trade of the world, 
an important part of which was the conveying to Eng- 
land of foreign merchandise. Not unreasonably the 
Commonwealth preferred to take into its own hands 
its own trade, out of the power of the neighbor, 
which, although nominally Republican and to some 
extent sympathizing with the Independent struggle, 
had so far, for the most part, offered aid and comfort 
to the Stuarts. The Dutch sought to arrive at some 



1652.] BLAKE AND VAN TROMP. 37 1 

accommodation, and obsequious negotiators appeared 
in London, whose tone toward the Commonwealth 
was in marked contrast to the superciliousness with 
which the young Hercules had been treated before 
he had strangled the snakes about his cradle. But 
while the diplomats conversed, the nations drifted 
into war in spite of them. The sailors on both sides 
were full of fight. The sea of those days was a do- 
main which knew little of law. Isolated ships came 
to blows. Courtesies punctiliously exacted on the 
one side, the dipping of the ensign, or backing the 
top sail, were purposely neglected on the other. 
Blake at length fell into collision, off Dover, with 
Van Tromp, the Dutch champion, two squadrons 
heavily cannonading one another. Efforts at peace 
became hopeless. From the green-table at White- 
hall, discussion was adjourned to the broad blue 
field, where the voices were to be more thunderous. 
In this war of giants, Vane really more than any other 
is the central figure. Nothing in English story is 
more marvellous ; not elsewhere in his career did 
Vane give such extraordinary evidences of power. 
Let us take a careful glance at these mildewed 
Order-Books, and see what help they will afford in 
giving definiteness to his image in this time. 

Immediately after the election of the third Council 
of State, Vane, December 2d, the day of organization, 
is put at the head of a large committee for manag- 
ing the affairs of Ireland and Scotland, and is also 
on committees to consider the obstructions of the 
Mint, to take care for preserving timber, and to con- 
sider the matter of giving audience to the ministers 



3J2 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1652. 

of foreign princes. December 4th, he is put at the 
head of the Admiralty and Navy Committee as be- 
fore, and December 17th placed on a Committee for 
Trade and Foreign Affairs. Upon his return from 
his absence in Scotland, he is soon, April 2d, added to 
the Committee to meet the Dutch ambassadors, and 
to that on French affairs, and on May 14th he is on 
that charged with sending an ambassador to Turkey. 
On the 17th of May, Vane is chosen "to be Presi- 
dent of the Council until this day month." During 
that period he was the official head of the nation. 
It cannot be regarded, however, as a distinction, for 
as the year went forward, obscure members of the 
Council are to be found in the same position, some- 
times twice over. The time of Vane's presidency 
was an important one. In that month fall Van 
T romp's attack upon Blake in the Downs (the an- 
chorage between the Goodwin Sands and the coast 
of Kent), and the extraordinary embassy sent by the 
States General of Holland to make a last attempt at 
peace. June 8th, authority is given to receive the 
ambassador with great splendor and ceremony, which 
is accordingly done. The embassy is without result. 
The records now become filled with preparations for 
a tremendous war, every line giving evidence of the 
careful watch kept by the Council of State upon the 
affair, and the determination to guide all movements 
so far as possible from the centre. June 18th, Blake 
is addressed : " We wrote you last night that we ap- 
proved of your fitting out the three Dutch men-of- 
war brought in by you ; and we now hear there is a 
fourth. We approve of that being fitted out also." 



1652.] BLAKE AND VAN TROMP. 373 

Blake is also commanded, a little later : " A constant 
correspondence is to be held between you and the 
Council, and between yourself and other parts of the 
fleet, by small vessels to be constantly sent between 
to give intelligence." Powder, cannon, provisions, 
stores of all kinds are cared for as the struggle deep- 
ens, the naval business absorbing the record almost 
completely. Vane's committee orders in August the 
" Sovereign," " Antelope," " Lion," " London," " Lit- 
tle President," and " Renown," fire-ship, to hasten 
away forthwith ; and in case they are not ready to 
sail, sharply examines the reasons. Men from In- 
goldsby's regiment at Dover are put on board the 
" Sovereign " to man her. Money from the sale of 
delinquents' estates is appropriated to the paying off 
of crews. Vane himself goes down to the fleet in 
October, we may suppose making his way on the ebb 
by sail and oar to Gravesend, to confer personally 
with Blake, and see with his own eye the craft to 
which the honor and safety of England are entrusted. 
As the war grows more terrible, through Vane's com- 
mittee thousands of soldiers are sent to the fighting- 
ships to take the place of the destroyed crews. Merit 
is promoted, inefficiency cashiered. The Admirals 
after battles write to Vane about the condition of 
their squadrons ; the recruiters report the tricks re- 
sorted to by men to avoid the sea service ; the sur- 
geons give evidence of the severity of the actions. 
After an engagement at which we shall presently 
look particularly, Surgeon Dan Whistler writes to Sir 
Henry Vane, Junior : " The scattered quarters of the 
sick and wounded makes a difficulty. If some capa- 



374 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1652. 

cious place, with good air, water, and convenience of 
landing, were procured, it would prevent their long 
exjDosure before they are received anywhere." Of 
Blake, who had been wounded, Whistler writes : " Gen. 
Blake, I hope, mends, but my hopes are checked by 
the maxim, ' De senibus non temere sperandum" I 
trust the great physician's protection may be on him, 
and on all public instruments of our safety." 

Where in the rush of the war there is mention in 
the records of other business, Vane is found promi- 
nent as well as in the conduct of hostilities.' Novem- 
ber 8th, he reports to the House a state of the several 
treasuries of this nation as represented to the Coun- 
cil. November 26th, he is to present to the House 
to-morrow the estimate of the charge of the land as 
well as the sea forces in the service. At the coming 
in of the new Council, at the beginning of December, 
to which he is elected nearly unanimously, his name 
stands first on the Committee for Ireland and Scot- 
land as well as for the Admiralty. He is prominent 
too in the management of Trade and the Plantations, 
of Diplomacy, and of Finance. 

No doubt the Generals and Admirals on the spot 
deserve the chief credit when great victories are 
gained. But who does not know that General and 
Admiral would be paralyzed if there were not be- 
hind them the energetic administrator ? What would 
Wolfe have been without the elder Pitt, what Nelson 
without the younger ? What Turenne and Luxem- 
bourg without Louvois and Colbert — what the mar- 
shals of a later time without Carnot? So in these 
years behind Blake stood Vane, as he had before 



1652.] BLAKE AND VAN TROMP. 375 

stood behind Cromwell. Back of all the shipbuild- 
ing, recruiting, cannon-founding, provisioning, stands 
at the centre, in the great days of the Common- 
wealth, Vane's committee. By their orders Blake, 
Dean, and Monk go to sea : the forests are felled : 
tar and cordage, powder and guns and canvas, are 
seized wherever they are to be had: merit is pro- 
moted, inefficiency cashiered, captains and crews that 
show the white feather sternly disciplined. Those 
were the most brilliant years of English history, and 
the great administrator of the period should have his 
place beside the sworded heroes, those who led the 
troop, and those who trod the deck. 

Vane's first biographer, Sikes, who had known him 
well, was but a purblind character, managing with ex- 
traordinary skill to avoid the mention in his account 
6f all that is most interesting in the career of his 
hero. He does, however, contrive to assert x Vane's 
sagacity, energy, and self-sacrifice at this great pe- 
riod, and evidence abounds that he makes no exces- 
sive claim. " That he could conjecture and spel out 
the most reserved consults and secret drifts of for- 
eign Councils against us (which they reckoned as 
tacita, concealed till executed) the Hollanders did ex- 
perience to their cost." He had " a most happy dex- 
terity at making a war." He " heartily labored to 
prevent a war with Holland," but being in " set him- 
self to make the best of it. . . . With five others he 
was appointed by Parliament to attend that affaire. 

1 Sikes, Life and Death of Sir lent me from the Harvard Library 
Henry Vane, Kt., p. 96 etc. The by Mr. Justin Winsor, belonged 
copy which I have used, kindly formerly to Carlyle. 



376 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1652. 

Hereupon he became the happy and speedy contriver 
of that successful fleet that did our work in a very 
critical season, when the Hollander vapoured upon 
our Seas. . . . His report to the House as to the 
War-ships by him recruited, ordered, and sent forth in 
so little time, to find the enemy work, seemed a thing 
incredible." At the beginning of the war he resigned 
the Treasurership of the Navy, the recognized yield 
of which to the incumbent, in war-time, Sikes de- 
clares would have been ,£20,000 a year. " Parlia- 
ment gave him an inconsiderable something in lieu 
thereof, without his seeking." Sikes hints that he 
was at this time embarrassed. At the time of the 
Self-denying Ordinance he refunded half of his re- 
ceipts as Treasurer of the Navy. From first to last 
he showed the most perfect integrity and unselfish- 
ness, and was completely above bribes. 

Sikes is by no means alone among his contempo- 
raries in high praise of Vane. Ludlow is not less 
strong. 1 By far the grandest testimony, however, is 
the sonnet of Milton, sent Vane, July 3d, which is 
given here, punctuation, italics, and capitals, pre- 
cisely as first printed. 

" Composed by a learned Gentleman, and sent him, July 3, 

1652. 2 
VANE, young in years, but in sage Counsel old, 
Than whom a better Senatour ner'e held 
The helme of Rome, when Gowns not Arms repell'd 
The fierce Epeirot and the African bold. 
Whether to settle peace or to unfold 

The drift of hollow states, hard to be spell'd, 
Then to advise how war may best, upheld, 
Move by her two main Nerves, Iron and Gold 

1 Memoirs, ii. 439. 2 Sikes, pp. 93, 94. 



1652.] BLAKE AND VAN TROMP. 377 

In all her equipage : besides to know 

Both spiritual power and civil, what each meanes, 

What severs each, thou hast learn't, which few have done- 

The bounds of either sword to thee we owe; 
Therefore on thy firm hand* Religion leanes 
In peace, and reckons thee her eldest Son." 

So spoke for Vane the man " whose soul was like 
a star and dwelt apart," now not recognized, for his 
finest splendors were as yet reserved. To the world 
he was the fierce pamphleteer by whose fulminations 
" more than anything else except the battle of Wor- 
cester, the foreign world had been awakened to the 
claims and strength of the Commonwealth, and 
Kings and other powers had been brought to it al- 
most on their knees." x The sonnet to Vane is con- 
temporary with the one to Cromwell, and though in 
the latter Cromwell is " our chief of men," the lan- 
guage applied to Vane is scarcely less strong. What 
impressive testimony that Milton, observing close at 
hand the transactions at the heart of things, sees in 
Vane such purity of character and magnificence of 
endowment ! It is worth while to spend a few mo- 
ments in analyzing the sonnet, especially since its 
long-drawn music, adapted to a generation thrice 
sifted and seasoned, makes it not altogether clear to 
the short-winded comprehension of our less stalwart 
time. 

Like the sonnet to Cromwell, that to Vane was 
immediately occasioned by the deep interest felt by 
Milton in the defeat of the plan for establishing a 
State Church. Note has been made of the measure 
and of the protest against it, penned perhaps by 

1 Masson, iv. 428. 



378 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1652. 

Roger Williams, and presented February 10th of 
this same year. Milton in one sonnet adjures Crom- 
well to give his help here, and in the other recog- 
nizes with all admiration Vane's clear adhesion to 
Voluntaryism, the principle, the American principle 
it may be said, that State and Church must be dis- 
tinct, — that no sect should be privileged, — that the 
civil magistrate must lay no trammels upon religion. 
In the enthusiastic apostrophe with which the sonnet 
opens, the man of forty is invested in our eyes with 
that glamour of youth, which, circumstanced as he 
was, surrounded him long after the time when for 
most men youth has faded ; and in comparing him to 
the Roman senator a picture is suggested of the re- 
pelling of force by dignity and moral strength rather 
than by weapons. " Thou hast learned, as few have 
done, what spiritual and civil power mean, and how 
they must be kept apart. To thee we owe the draw- 
ing of a clear line between the secular and the reli- 
gious, and therefore a discrimination of the bounds 
of either sword." As the verse proceeds, the great 
war-administrator falls under the poetic light, the pro- 
vider of iron and the provider of gold : we find em- 
phasized, too, that matchless astuteness (to which 
Milton takes no exception, however others may some- 
times hesitate) through which now the scheming of 
petty plotters is so effectually circumvented, now the 
underhand policy of great nations. How beautiful 
the immortality to which Vane in the concluding line 
is uplifted, as the eldest son and the mainstay of 
Religion ! 



1652.] BLAKE AND VAN TROMP. 379 

The biographer of Vane may be spared the labor of 
giving the details of the ocean war with Holland, but 
can properly afford his readers a glimpse of blue water. 

How could foreign nations look otherwise than 
askance upon a sight so portentous as the rise of 
the English Commonwealth ? France had never had 
more than the faintest semblance of popular govern- 
ment : it had been crushed out in Spain two hundred 
years before : it had disappeared in Italy with the 
Hohenstauffen in the thirteenth century: Germany, 
which the Thirty Years' War had left scarcely more 
than an ash-heap full of skeletons, was given over to 
brutish tyrants : Denmark was hostile : from the ec- 
centric Christina of Sweden no countenance could 
be expected. In Holland, indeed, there was sympa- 
thy, and it seemed hard enough that the Common- 
wealth should be forced to wage its first and hardest 
fight with Holland. It came about in this way. The 
stadtholder of Holland, the young William of Or- 
ange, who had married the eldest daughter of the 
beheaded Charles, not only offered an asylum to his 
brother-in-law, Charles II, but to a crowd of fugitive 
Royalists. The Orange or aristocratic party was too 
strong for the Republicans. When, therefore, the 
Commonwealth proposed a close league if not union 
with the Dutch, the idea was rejected. When it 
passed the Act of Navigation designed to take Eng- 
lish commerce out of the hands of the Dutch, Hol- 
land was greatly incensed. When, moreover, the 
English refused to allow to Holland such an empire 
of the sea as that they should not be recognized as 
masters in their own waters, war broke out, and 



380 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1652. 

nothing more terrible has ever been seen upon the 
sea than the naval struggle which now ensued. 

The war broke out in May, 1652, and was entirely 
upon the ocean. Holland was then at the height of 
her power, by no means a land of dull-witted, vege- 
tating people, as Americans too often suppose, bas- 
ing their notion upon the injurious caricatures of 
Washington Irving, but the glorious race which had 
made itself beyond all rivalry master of the deep. 
Cooped up in their little corner of Europe, beset 
both by nature and man, holding their hard-won ter- 
ritory against the waves by dikes, against man by 
hearts and arms as stout as ever belonged to heroes, 
they possessed more ships than all the rest of Europe 
put together, had founded colonies at the ends of the 
earth, and had the carrying-trade of the world. They 
had just baffled and brought to naught the might of 
Spain, though Spain was almost mistress of two 
hemispheres. What wonder that they entered into 
the conflict with the new-born power which the 
Ironsides had set up, with the highest hopes of 
success ! 

The face of the deep in the seventeenth century 
was fraught with terror and mystery. To this day 
sailors are the most superstitious of men. Then, an 
uncanny population of dragons, monsters, and chi- 
meras dire filled earth, air, and ocean. Sands, shores, 
and desert wildernesses had their airy forms that 
syllable men's names. Every sailor 

" Learned when, beneath the tropic gale, 
Full swelled the vessel's steady sail, 
And the broad Indian moon her light 
Poured on the watch of middle night, — 






1652.] BLAKE AND VAN TROMP. 38 1 

What gales are sold on Lapland's shore, — 
How whistle rash bids tempests roar, — 
Of witch, of mermaid, and of sprite, 
And of the dread St. Elmo's light : 
Or of that phantom ship, whose form 
Shoots like a meteor through the storm ; 
When the dark scud comes driving hard, 
And lowered is every top-sail yard, 
And canvas wove in earthly looms, 
No more to brave the storm presumes ! 
Then mid the war of sea and sky, 
Top and top-gallant hoisted high, 
Full spread and crowded every sail, 
The Demon Frigate braves the gale ; 
And well the doomed spectators know 
The harbinger of wreck and woe ! " 1 

The ocean too had other than phantom dangers. 
Laws which on the land had sway had little force 
upon the sea. Most sailors were more or less light- 
fingered, taking with little ceremony wherever in 
their rovings they encountered those weaker than 
themselves ; and professed pirates abounded every- 
where. By every frequented Indian cape and strait 
lay the Malay proas. The Barbary freebooters 
roved the Mediterranean unchecked, and went far 
beyond the straits of Gibraltar. The western waters 
had their buccaneers, burying their booty upon des- 
olate sand-keys, then murdering upon the spot some 
negro or captive Spaniard, that his ghost, haunting 
the place, might frighten off all searchers. Old pic- 
tures give the seventeenth-century sailor a strange 
garb — a sort of kilt or petticoat like a Highlander, 
a striped shirt, a crimson cap, a knife always at his 
girdle, if not cutlass and pistols. Daring vagabonds 
they were, venturing with Frobisher and Hudson into 

1 Rokeby, Canto II. 11. 



382 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1653. 

Arctic ice, breasting tropic hurricanes, and coasting 
the lee-shores of far-off dangerous waters in the track 
of Drake and Sir Humphrey Gilbert, — their craft 
sometimes only half decked, scarcely larger than the 
launch which the modern liner carries housed upon 
her quarter, believing in but defying phantom perils, 
— at each headland and island, watchful of necessity 
against robbers. How rough, how lawless, how pic- 
turesque the race ! This life and character so wild 
must be taken into account, in order to understand 
the astonishing tenacity and fierceness of the fight- 
ing in the war now to be considered. 

The theatre of the war was what is known as the 
" Narrow Seas," — the English Channel and the Ger- 
man Ocean. After a stormy winter voyage, on the 
8th of February, once, as the present writer came, 
weak with seasickness, upon deck, he found the sun 
warm and bright as May almost, driving before it the 
heavy fog. The sea at last was smooth ; beyond it 
to the northward rose, dim, a fine bold line of shore, 
towards which the heart turned with a double long- 
ing. To a sea-tired man, it was the first land ; to a 
son of the Anglo Saxon race, it was the old home. 
The cape was the Lizard, the southwest point of 
England, at the entrance to the English Channel. 
Soon the Lizard grew fainter as we steered eastward ; 
the land receded on the left until the gazer almost 
felt that, Ixion-like, he had embraced a cloud. But 
as the forenoon proceeded, the shore rose again, this 
time into Start Point, close by Plymouth. Once 
more there was a trend of the shore inward ; once 
more, in front, beyond the sea, now sail-dotted, rose a 



I653-] BLAKE AND VAN TROMP. 383 

high, bold bluff, this time the Bill of Portland. Then, 
after the moon rose, it was St. Albans Head, and at 
last the Needles, at the western end of the Isle of 
Wight. Thus, all day, we shot from cape to cape 
across the bays, with far-off glimpses into Cornwall, 
Devon, Dorset, and Hampshire. Even then upon 
the fields there was a tinge of spring green ; once, 
over a hill, a rainbow hung in a cloud of vapor. The 
blue line inland was soft and undulating; the great 
capes rose bald and bleak, their storm-worn ledges 
beating back the surf like doubled knuckles. So the 
majestic brotherhood, the headlands of the Channel, 
passed us on, one to another, until we were sheltered 
in the Solent. On deck betimes the next morning, it 
was revealed that we were just between Dover and 
Calais. Southeast the eye could make out distinctly 
a high, wavy coast-line — France. Nearer, to the 
north and west, was the white shore of Albion. The 
wind blew bitter cold out of the North Sea. One 
thought of Lear and Edgar, as the Shakespeare Cliff 
looked through the air sharp as ingratitude. 

The white beacon now was on the South Fore- 
land, the crowded anchorage in front the Downs, the 
light-ship, rocking on the combing wintry sea, marked 
the Goodwin sands where the carcasses of more tall 
ships lie buried than on any other wrecking-ground 
of the world. All to seaward was black with storm; 
the air was clear, however, and a far-extending line of 
craft could be seen, — the white bellying mass, lean- 
ing threateningly over from the careening hull, — all 
shouldering heavily through the tossing surge. At 
sunset we were off the Helder ; at ten at night, the 



384 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1653. 

light on the Texel was made out, the beacon of Am- 
sterdam, low, faint, and steady as one peered for it in 
the harsh head wind. We passed it, following north- 
ward the ancient path of the Vikings toward their 
retreats in the fiords. 

How do old associations crowd upon the mind in 
such scenes ! Phoenician ships, on the lookout for 
amber and tin, — galleys laboring over the strait with 
the legions of Cassar, — red-bearded robbers, Saxon, 
Norse, and Dane, William and his Normans, — Plan- 
tagenets ploughing past to fields of conquest in 
France, — the Spanish Armada vexed by Drake and 
Howard, a whale fighting with a sword-fish, — Howe, 
and Hood, and Nelson, patrolling here in towering 
74s, to keep off Napoleon, — how fine the sequence of 
historic figures that since gray antiquity have seen 
rise, as we saw them rise, those beaked and windy 
promontories, forever surf-lapped ! Of all events, 
however, of which the English Channel has been the 
scene, what ones more worthy to hold the thoughts 
of Americans than the struggles here of the Com- 
monwealth ? Popular liberty was the aim. Had 
those struggles failed, America as well as England 
might have bent to the sceptre of an autocrat instead 
of to the ballot of the freeman. 

On February 18, 1653, the English Channel and 
its shores looking, we may suppose, as in the Febru- 
ary view just described, a fleet of seventy sail lay off 
the Bill of Portland, pigmies, for the most part, no 
doubt, compared with our modern craft, though a 
few ships were of fair size, and the naval architec- 
ture of the time was such that even small ships were 



1653.] BLAKE AND VAN TROMP. 385 

sometimes imposing. The " Sovereign of the Seas," 
at this time the crack ship of the British navy, was 
of nearly 1,700 tons burden, elaborately painted and 
gilded. For sixty years she was the famous fighting- 
ship, earning the sobriquet of " The Yellow Devil." 1 
That day, however, the " Triumph," of sixty-eight 
guns, was the flag-ship, and in the lookout, high up 
the mast, hung Robert Blake of Bridgewater in 
Somersetshire, a man of fifty-three, short, thick-set, 
his broad face much bronzed by campaigning on land 
and sea. He was of the same station in life as Crom- 
well, of Oxford training, with a pedantic foible for 
quoting Latin, curious enough in an old sailor. He 
had risen to fame as a colonel of horse. When for- 
eign foes were to be met, he was sent to the fleet, 
though he was fifty years old and had scarcely ever 
been on shipboard. Strangely enough, such inexperi- 
ence was regarded as but a slight objection. He had 
bestridden the war-horse to good purpose, therefore 
he could ride the waves well ; the sequence in those 
days was thought logical, and seemed often to be 
thoroughly justified. Not only Blake but many an- 
other tough trooper, on each side, — Rupert, for in- 
stance, and Monk and Dean, — were not less dashing 
and effective on the surf than on the turf. It is 
chronicled that these fine old horse-marines some- 
times became confused in battle, roaring out to the 
sailors commands appropriate for cavalry : but it did 
no harm. With surprising power of adaptation the 
champions of that time appear, with foot now in the 
stirrup, now on the shrouds, equally efficient with 
either brace. 

1 She was the first English three-decker. 



386 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1653. 

That February morning Blake had been three 
years at sea. He had been broken in in waters that 
are now very familiar to the tourist. How many a 
traveller to Europe has looked with all his eyes upon 
the Fasnett Light, that beacon upon its splinter of 
lonely rock so far at sea, the first firm bit of the old 
world which you encounter. Close back of the Fas- 
nett lies the old port of Kinsale, where Rupert lay 
for months with a fleet when the Stuart cause, lost 
on land, could only be maintained on the sea ; and 
Blake's first service was in a lonq; blockade of that 
stretch of Irish coast than which no shore in the 
world is more storm-beaten and perilous. Wrote the 
servant who waited upon him, to whom in spite of 
the proverb he seems to have been a hero: "He 
prayed himself aboard ship, with such of his men as 
could be admitted to that duty, and the last thing he 
did after he had sriven his commands and word to his 
men in order to retire to his bed, was to pray with 
his servant. Then he would say, ' Thomas, bring 
me the pretty cup of sack,' which he did with a crust 
of bread ; he would then sit down and give Thomas 
liberty to do the same, and inquire what news he 
had of his Bridgewater men that day, and talk of 
the people and affairs of the place." We have now 
to see how this noble old Puritan earned the fame of 
being the greatest of English sailors after Nelson. 

In the beginning of 1653, things were critical for 
the Commonwealth. Van Tromp, the Dutch admi- 
ral, had in the fall crushed the English fleet, and all 
winter had patrolled the Channel with a broom at his 
mast-head to signify that he could sweep the seas. 



1653d BLAKE AND VAN TROMP. 387 

Every English port was under blockade, or in dan- 
ger of it. The peril was understood. The Council 
of State, under the lead of young Sir Henry Vane, 
recalled all scattered ships, raised the force at sea to 
thirty thousand men, and seized hemp, tar, and tim- 
ber wherever they could be found. Night and day 
the ship-yards rattled ; the list of captains was se- 
verely scrutinized, and merit and incompetency got 
each its just deserts with the strictest impartiality. 
Blake went aboard not alone. He had as subordi- 
nates the skilful seamen Penn, father of Sir Wm. 
Penn, and Lawson, lately raised from before the 
mast, one of the most original of naval commanders. 
Dean, a well-known soldier, was on the " Triumph " 
with Blake; and black-browed Monk, famous as Crom- 
well's right hand in Scotland, and destined to a more 
questionable fame in years still far ahead, as the re- 
storer of Charles II, went aboard ship with a great 
force of land-troops at a day's notice. 

What fast-sailing frigate it was, whether the " Con- 
stant Warwick," the " Antelope," or the " First," 
" Second," or " Tenth Whelp," that first brought news 
of the approach of Van Tromp, we cannot say. It 
was made known, however, that he was on his way 
eastward from the Lizard, and the Admirals off Port- 
land Bill, Lawson in the " Fairfax," Penn in the 
" Speaker," and Monk in the " Vanguard," lay in his 
track. The Dutchmen had seventy-six ships of war, 
and a convoy of three hundred merchantmen, craft 
from all parts of the world with rich cargoes, to be 
guarded to port through these dangerous Narrow 
Seas. Van Tromp himself is a bluff, picturesque 



388 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1653. 

figure. No suspicion of a horse-marine character 
attached itself to him, for he had been a sailor from 
boyhood, and was the son of a sailor. He had seen 
his father killed in action by the English, and had 
been himself for two years and a half a prisoner to 
the English, serving as a cabin-boy. He had brought 
the Spaniard to grief. He had fought the English 
in battles drawn and battles gained, and now stood 
on his quarter-deck, grizzly with fifty-six years, an 
old salt almost web-footed. As he led his vast array, 
fighting-ships and convoy, from headland to head- 
land, along the shores, one wonders whether the 
broom was still spliced to the main-truck of the 
" Brederode," his flagship of ninety guns. Of Van 
Tromp's lieutenants, perfect seamen and doughty 
fighters, but one can be mentioned here, De Ruyter, 
destined later to a fame greater even than that of his 
Admiral, — that day a young commander pushing 
on to the niche he was at last to occupy, as the best 
sword and the best .sailor of his heroic sailor race. 
Blake had a few more ships of war than the Dutch, 
— at first sixty, reinforced later by twenty more from 
Portsmouth. The English, moreover, were one in 
spirit, Ironsides to a man, while the Dutch were rent 
with factions : Van Tromp himself was of the Or- 
ange party, and lamely seconded on that account by 
some of his captains. The Dutchman, moreover, 
had to look out for the safety of his great convoy, 
the loss of whose cargoes would ruin half Holland. 
One feels that he was considerably overmatched. 

Blake himself, from the lookout of the " Triumph," 
high up the mast, saw the Dutch approaching on 



i6s30 BLAKE AND VAN TROMP. 389 

February 18, the innumerable sails white in the bril- 
liant sunrise. Van Tromp had the wind and bore 
boldly down upon him with the men-of-war, while 
the merchantmen kept well in the rear. Blake's own 
line was not yet formed : one squadron lay toward 
Portsmouth, another westward, toward the Start.. 
Not an inch, however, was yielded, Blake with his 
few ships meeting at first the whole force of the 
Dutch, who came on well together. The battle be- 
gan at eight, and it was late in the forenoon before 
the succoring ships, baffled by the wind, could beat 
up to his help. Van Tromp, with the favoring 
breeze, might easily have carried his convoy past, but 
with what grace could he bear his broom if he left 
his enemy behind him ? As the " Brederode " came 
up, the " Triumph " lay first in her path, receiving 
Van Tromp's broadside when within musket-shot. 
The " Brederode " tacked instantly, sending in an- 
other broadside close under the sails, with a splinter- 
ing and carnage that may be imagined. But the 
" Triumph " gave gun for gun. In a few minutes the 
little English squadron was enveloped by enemies, 
and a cannonade roared over the sea that could be 
heard from Portland to Boulogne. When two hos- 
tile ships approached, there would be a ramming with 
prows, a grappling of hulls, then a cry on both sides 
for boarders. How pike and cutlass clashed in the 
port-holes; how the sailors climbed, clinging to every 
projecting bit of carving, running along boom and 
yard, leaping at a venture from one tossing deck to 
another among a crowd of enemies, the hot cannon 
meantime at rest, because in the melee, friend was 



390 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1653. 

no less likely to suffer than foe, — the old histories 
give data for the whole terrible picture. De Ruyter 
boarded the " Prosperous " and drove her crew to sur- 
render. He was driven off : he captured her again 
and was -driven off again, — the shattered decks of 
the ship strewn four times with the awful wreck of 
the combat. Here was a ship on fire, — there a ship 
went down with all on board, her wounded captain 
flourishing his hanger defiantly as she disappeared. 
On the "Triumph," more than a hundred of her crew, 
half her complement, were slain outright, and scarcely 
a man remained unhurt. Blake himself was sorely 
wounded in the thigh by a flying splinter, which 
same splinter, says the conscientious chronicler, " tore 
a large hole in the breeches of Admiral Dean." 
Almost every English ship engaged was dismasted, 
and the sea was strewn with ruin. Blake's remain- 
ing ships at last came up, and the scale turned in his 
favor. Amid the obstinate fighting it was necessary 
to tow the " Speaker " out of the line, utterly helpless. 
Others crept through the Solent to Portsmouth, just 
able to make sail ; and still others were so crippled 
as scarcely to float. The Dutch, however, had lost 
eight ships. What riddled and gore-stained trophies ! 
One, when visited, was found to have no living soul 
on board. Such was the battle of the first day. 

As dusk fell, Van Tromp withdrew, protecting his 
merchantmen, who, while the men-of-war grappled, 
had diligently made their way onward, and were now 
well eastward toward home. The breeze fell at 
night, and the fleets drifted slowly past the southern 
shore of the Isle of Wight, the unsleeping crews 



1 653.] BLAKE AND VAN TROMP. 39 1 

making ready for a new conflict on the morrow. The 
battered " Triumph " with her wounded commander 
managed in some way to keep with the rest, destined 
to play a further part in what Clarendon calls this 
"very stupendous action." The 19th there seems to 
have been no engagement, but on the morning of the 
20th a light breeze gave the fleets the opportunity 
anew. Van Tromp changed his tactics. Spreading 
his men-of-war in a wide crescent, like the protecting 
wings of a mother-bird, he gathered the merchant- 
men within the hollow, and sped up the Channel. 
The heavy-laden craft made slow way. At noon, 
that astonishing " Triumph," under jury masts we may 
suppose, was upon the Dutch rear within gun-shot, 
and soon after the bow-chasers of the remainder of 
the English ships were in full play. The signals 
flew from the " Brederode " to the traders : they were 
to make their best speed, hugging close the French 
coast by Calais and Dunkirk. He himself with the 
fighting-ships tacked about with the finest courage 
against the English, now concentrated and outnum- 
bering him. De Ruyter was in especial danger. 
Lawson, in the " Fairfax," was especially brave. The 
English began to have the upper hand, but Van 
Tromp fell back toward his convoy, " contesting 
every wave." Faction, however, was rife upon the 
decks of the Dutch, and when night came at last, 
clear and cold, what with treachery within and such 
foes without, the redoubtable Hollander was glad of 
a respite. 

" Still," as Penn said afterwards, remembering those 
three days, " a Dutchman is never so dangerous as 



392 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1653. 

when he is desperate." On Sunday morning, the 
21st, the mother-bird was seen as before with her 
chickens protected by her wings, but now sadly 
plucked and lamed. For a third time there was the 
fiercest contest, this day where the strait is nar- 
rowest. How, as the cannon boomed off Dover, the 
population, even from the interior, must have for- 
saken the churches and gathered upon the cliffs, 
peering at the distant battle through the wintry air ! 
Penn at last broke through Van Tromp's encircling 
guard and captured fifty merchantmen. The bat- 
tered " Triumph," with Blake on the quarter-deck in 
spite of his wound, dashed on after the main body, 
not regarding: the craft which, reckless of themselves, 
threw themselves in her way. His fleet streamed 
after him, the cannon never silent, while the crippled 
masts bent under the press of sail. More than half 
of the Dutch men-of-war became prizes, and Blake 
felt sure of capturing the entire fleet. But as pur- 
suers and pursued swept out into the North Sea, a 
night of storm set in : when morning came, Van 
Tromp had vanished as if he had been the Flying 
Dutchman himself. In their flat-bottomed craft 
made for' shallow seas, knowing now every inlet and 
current of the home waters, the Dutch had fled over 
and through the dangerous bars, close in shore, where 
the English dared not follow. The clutch of Blake 
had been eluded after all. The greater part of the 
convoy flocked into the Texel toward Amsterdam, 
bark and cargo safe ; while the fighting craft, dimin- 
ished but defiant, backed now by dangerous shore 
batteries, offered to the foe their still unconquered 
broadsides. 



1653] BLAKE AND VAN TROMP. 393 

Never was battle closer or more tenacious. Never 
have English sailors been so fairly matched, except 
perhaps in those frigate duels, such small affairs in 
comparison with this mighty encounter, when Yankee 
and Briton gave blow for blow. Remember the 
cause those formidable Puritan sailors had at heart. 
Blake was a thorough Republican ; so that day were 
all his captains, however some of them afterwards 
may have used their swords in behalf of arbitrary 
power. The cause that day was that of the freedom 
of the People, as much as upon any field of our Rev- 
olution or Civil War. Truly, as an American sails 
through the Channel from the Lizard until at last 
the North Foreland sinks out of sight, there is no 
association of those memorable waters so worthy to 
be recalled as that great three days' conflict, which 
reverberated over the long leagues almost from end 
to end. 

Already, it must be remembered, the war had 
raged for nine months, when Blake and Van Tromp 
sighted one another off Portland Bill ; nor did the 
indecisive action which has just been described end 
it. Van Tromp was in the Downs again early in 
June with one hundred ships, this time unencum- 
bered by a convoy. Blake's wound kept him inac- 
tive, but Lawson broke the Dutch line after the fash- 
ion of Rodney against De Grasse, and Nelson at 
Trafalgar. Poor Dean, the hero of the torn breeches, 
that day lost his life by a chain-shot, and Monk 
showed himself a capital commander. The " Brede- 
rode " herself was boarded and on the brink of cap- 
ture. At the critical moment a light was thrown, 



394 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1653. 

it is said by Van Tromp himself, into the magazine. 
The decks roared into the air with all the English 
intruders and a great part of the Dutch defenders. 
Van Tromp, it was thought, was of course lost, but 
coming from somewhere, from the air, or the sea, or 
some fragment of the flagship which the explosion 
spared, invulnerable as a phantom, he was seen after 
the briefest space on the deck of a fresh, fast-sailing 
frigate, careering along his shattered and yielding 
line to rally them to a new encounter. The day, 
however, clearly went against him ; nor was fortune 
kinder in July. In a conflict fiercer than ever, a 
musket-ball stretched Van Tromp dead upon his 
deck, and the cause of Holland was lost. That day 
alone five thousand men were slain, and in the whole 
war the Dutch admitted a loss of one thousand one 
hundred vessels. 

Though Vane was soon to be laid aside, we may 
trace briefly the subsequent course of the superb 
Navy which he did so much to call into being. After 
the contest with the magnificent Dutch, it was found 
the merest child's play to encounter any other naval 
power. Denmark was awed into respect. In the 
Mediterranean, where the might of England had 
never been felt, Blake's guns woke the lands far and 
near to a sense of the island power. The persecuted 
Vaudois peasants, " The slaughtered saints, whose 
bones lay scattered on the Alpine mountains cold," 
in whose behalf Milton invoked the vengeance 
of the Lord in verse inspired with noble wrath, 
found in Blake the instrument of that vengeance. 



1653] BLAKE AND VAN TROMP. 395 

From Piedmont in the north to Sicily in the south, 
Duke, Pope, and Viceroy became submissive before 
him. He humbled the Barbary pirates, a hundred 
and fifty years before Preble and Decatur. To 
abase France was then no great task, for France was 
weakened at home by the war of the Fronde. Blake's 
greatest feat, after the conquest of the Dutch, was 
his discipline of Spain, then far along in her deca- 
dence but still formidable. 

Incongruous as were the Puritan and the Span- 
iard, relations on the surface friendly long subsisted 
between them. On the high seas, however, their 
ships were often fighting. When at last the demand 
was made that trade to the West Indies should be 
free to English ships, and that the Inquisition should 
let alone Bible-reading merchants and sailors in 
Spanish harbors, the Spanish minister declared that 
these were his masters two eyes, which the English 
proposed to put out at once. War therefore came. 

Ever since the conquests of Cortez and Pizarro 
the treasure-ships had come in periodical fleets from 
America. The wealth they brought was various, 
and long in gathering from points far distant from 
one another. The Philippines sent rich burdens 
across the Pacific to Acapulco, whence they went to 
Panama, being here met by the products of Peru 
brought up from the south. To oriental spices and 
Peruvian silver, Panama added pearls; and the whole, 
packed upon long trains of mules, crossed the isth- 
mus to be loaded into great galleons. These were 
manned, for the most part, by Basques, the best sail- 
ors of Spain, and by picked bodies of soldiers. At 



396 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1656. 

Havana and St. Domingo the heavy cargoes were 
still further increased by the yield of the West 
Indies. The silver, in great ingots like sugar-loaves, 
and the gold, were piled beneath the captain's cabin, 
while in the holds and about the decks were heaped 
the bales of less costly produce. In those uncertain 
times every precaution was taken. Though the gal- 
leons sometimes carried sixty cannon, they dared not 
venture alone over the pirate-haunted seas, but;iiade 
the homeward voyage in great fleets. How imagi- 
nation, and also cupidity, then were kindled by the 
thought ! The riches of the new world, dug from 
mines, plundered from pagan temples, wrung from 
tawny, feather-decorated native princes, at who shall 
tell what cost of blood and sweat and death, moving 
in those great argosies across the waters to maintain 
the decaying power of Spain ! 

How Blake and his captains met the plate-ships 
in sight of Cadiz, the long dangerous voyage as the 
Spaniards thought ended, when they were saluting 
with their cannon the home forts at the mouth of the 
harbor, the terrible Englishmen winning a booty of 
several millions, cannot be told here: nor his won- 
derful battle in the harbor of Santa Cruz in the 
Canaries, beneath the peak of Teneriffe. Clarendon 
wrote of the latter : " The whole action was so mi- 
raculous, that all men who knew the place wondered 
that any sober men, with what courage soever en- 
dowed, would ever have undertaken it. . . . The 
Spaniards comforted themselves with the belief that 
they were devils and not men, who had destroyed 
them in such a manner." 



1656.] BLAKE AND VAN TROMP. 397 

But Blake's time had come. He was fifty-six 
years old, decrepit through wounds, worn out with 
weary tossing, winter and summer, upon desolate 
seas. He yearned for his beloved Somersetshire, 
and with the early summer of 1656, his battered 
flagship, the " George," crossing the Bay of Biscay, 
made at length the Lizard, at the opening of the 
Channel. Home was at hand, but the Admiral lay 
dying. The ship spread all her canvas, that at 
least he might die ashore. Her progress, however, 
was slow, crippled as she was through much service, 
like her commander; and off the Start, two hours 
before they could cast anchor in Plymouth roads, 
his spirit fled. Heroic Ironside that he was, he 
prayed as he fought, whether in the saddle or on the 
deck, and the rugged mariners who obeyed him 
lifted up their voices in company. Nor was he with- 
out the finer and gentler traits. He loved his old 
neighbors and his home, and like Hampden, Sidney, 
and Vane, while combatant in the fiercest conflicts, 
had the graces of a scholar and a gentleman. He 
believed in government of the People, and wore him- 
self out in its vindication. His last battles, indeed, 
were under arbitrary power, the Protectorate of 
Oliver ; but he probably felt, as it may be believed 
Oliver himself felt, that the arbitrary power was but 
temporary, the stern time making necessary the one 
strong hand for the moment, but only for the mo- 
ment. May we not say that this champion in his 
ideas was an American ! 

The bold headland of the Start fronts the sea as 
of old, the pleasant fields of Devonshire behind, the 



398 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1656. 

surf at its base, the battle-hallowed waves of the 
Channel tossing before. How it is dignified, as the 
thought rises in the mind of him who looks upon it, 
that it saw the death of Blake ! * 

1 Among the authorities for the and Hannay ; and Le Clerc : His- 

Dutch war and the life of Blake loire des Provinces Unies des Pays 

have been the biographies by Dr. Bas. 
Samuel Johnson, Hepworth Dixon, 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THE DISSOLUTION OF THE RUMP. 

In the midst of his power, while " young " was still 
appropriately prefixed to his name (he was but forty- 
one), in the midst of services as splendid as a states- 
man has ever rendered to his country (one potent 
voice, however, that of Carlyle, 1 has been raised to 
belittle his work), Vane was suddenly laid on the 
shelf, and during five of his best years had nothing 
to do with the government. The circumstances are 
very memorable and deserve to be carefully studied. 

No one felt satisfied to have the Rump continue. 
It was a temporary arrangement, to be suffered no 
longer than was absolutely necessary ; and the chiefs 
of the Honest Party, who from the death of Charles 
to the battle of Worcester and after had been a unit, 
had, as we have seen, never lost sight of the matter 
of having the Rump dissolved as soon as possible. 
In spite of the successes of the Commonwealth, the 
Rump remained a mere rag of an assembly, a large 
proportion of those recognized as members very 
seldom showing their faces. A House of seventy 
was a rarity, and fifty was a good number. It made 
little headway moreover in the settlement of impor- 

1 Cromwell, ii. 6. 



400 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1653. 

tant matters ; how could it when the hour so pressed ? 
but the Army, which not unnaturally felt that it had 
earned the ri^ht to criticise, was not slow in findino- 
fault. 

August 13, 1652, a petition from important Army 
men was handed in, urging Parliament to alacrity 
on many matters. Parliament was not pleased at 
the interference ; and authorities of the time, 1 as 
well as modern writers, assert that Vane and the 
Parliament men were glad to behold the rise of 
Blake, and fostered the Navy while they diminished 
the Army. It would be salutary, they thought, to 
have a great reputation to balance somewhat the 
enormous prestige of Cromwell: the soldiers too, from 
colonel to corporal, were disposed to assume much : 
the civil power ought to be supreme: how to deal 
with this uncomfortable self-confidence? 

It is possible that Vane and his friends were think- 
ing of something else besides making a good front 
against Van Tromp, in many of their measures. 
Through turning soldiers into sailors by the whole- 
sale, as was done when entire regiments were sent 
on shipboard, the Army was weakened. When 
Vane was preparing the fleet of eighty ships with 
which Blake was to fight the great three days' battle 
of the Channel, he initiated measures for raising 
£ 1 20,000 a month for war expenses, and at the same 
time proposed the selling of Hampton Court, Wind- 
sor Park, Hyde Park, the Royal Park at Greenwich, 
Enfield Castle, and Somerset House. As regards 
the latter scheme, he may have had a deeper design 

1 Ludlow, ii. 450. Clarendon, vi. 2691. 



I653-] THE DISSOLUTION OF THE RUMP. 40I 

than to raise money. If the parks and seats were 
disposed of, appurtenances as they were of sovereign 
state, the temptation to any person high in authority 
to seize upon supreme power might be diminished. 

However the Rump leaders felt, they pushed with 
alacrity, whenever time could be found, the work 
they had never laid down, that of arranging for the 
Parliament that was to succeed them. Ireton's 
" Agreement of the People " still remained the gen- 
eral plan, but the same difficulty presented itself as 
before. An election so free as was contemplated 
by that document would be likely to return a Parlia- 
ment in which their enemies would preponderate, and 
in that case all the political and religious freedom 
which had cost such a bitter struggle, would be cer- 
tain to be sacrificed. Cromwell was much oppressed 
by the difficulties of the situation. In his idea the 
Rump must come to an end, and yet the election of 
the new Parliament must be postponed. The plan 
he finally hit upon as the most feasible, was that of 
a new Council, of "well-affected" men, to consist 
of forty, like the present Council of State, but not ne- 
cessarily to consist of the same men, and not to de- 
rive their power from the Rump. Such a provision 
was quite unconstitutional, but was declared by Crom- 
well to be " no new thing when the land was under 
the like hurly-burlies." This arbitrary Council, in the 
Lord General's thought, should take care temporarily 
of the public safety, and engineer as speedily and pru- 
dently as possible the much desired new Parliament. 
Whence was the power of the projected new Council 
to be derived? From the Army; and since the 



402 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1653. 

Army had no thought or feeling but according to its 
great chief, from Cromwell. 

The plan which the leaders of the Rump came to 
favor was this : to have the new Parliament elected 
as Ireton had provided, but with two very important 
amendments, designed to make secure the suprem- 
acy of the Honest Party. 1st. All the Rump mem- 
bers were to continue in place without reelection. 
2d. A committee of the Rump was to superintend 
the elections and judge of their validity or fitness. 

Antagonism now began to develop itself strongly 
between the two knots of men, at the head of which, 
respectively, were Cromwell and Vane. To Vane, 
with whom stood Haselrig, Scott, Marten, Sidney, 
Whitlocke, the plan of Cromwell seemed a perilous 
departure from constitutional ways, to be opposed as 
he had opposed the purge of Pride. To Cromwell, 
with whom stood St. John and the soldiers Lambert, 
Harrison, Fleetwood, Desborough, etc., the plan of 
Vane seemed simply one for the perpetuation and 
recruitment of the Rump, which must be got out of 
the way at any cost. November 3, 1654, had in the 
fall after Worcester been fixed as the date beyond 
which the Rump should not continue. Vane and 
his friends became eager for dissolution, and wished 
afterwards to fix the date for November 3, 1653. 
The spring of 1653 had now come with its successes. 
What better time for a dissolution than now, the 
Rump began to think, when the magnificent victory 
in the Channel, due to Blake and Vane, had given 
the Rump a splendid popularity ! In the elections 
they might count that the country would send many 



1 653.] THE DISSOLUTION OF THE RUMP. 403 

of their friends to the new Parliament. Cromwell 
probably was not pleased with such a prospect. For 
one in his position it would be only human to look 
askance upon the rise of such a rival as Blake. 
Would it not be well to take some decided step, be- 
fore Blake's skill and courage had put him up an- 
other round ? " Ought he to permit an appeal to 
the country when Blake's victories, and the necessity 
of more of them to end the war, would be used as 
the electioneering cries of Vane and the Rump ? " l 

The split between the groups widened rapidly, 
Vane and his friends pushing with all vigor, side by 
side with care for the tremendous war, the bill for the 
dissolution and the election of the new Parliament. 
The records of the committee meetings have not 
been preserved, and the bill itself, as we shall pres- 
ently see, disappeared in a memorable way, but it is 
quite possible to know what were its essential pro- 
visions. They had hardly varied, except in the way 
of definiteness, from Ireton's plan. Fifty years ago 
Forster investigated the matter most carefully, 2 elu- 
cidating all details necessary for a full understanding 
of the bill. He discovered that it anticipated re- 
markably, sometimes even in minute particulars, the 
great Reform measures of the era of 1832. The 
Parliament was to consist of four hundred members. 
In the case of the boroughs which had so lost their 
population as to become insignificant, the " rotten 
boroughs," the representative was taken away, while 
to larger towns that had risen to importance repre- 
sentation was given. Amongst the shires an equi- 

1 Masson, iv. 409. 2 Life of Vane, 316. 



404 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1653. 

table distribution of representatives was made, those 
less important having their number reduced, while 
the more important received their due weight. As 
regards qualification, the franchise in towns was to 
belong to all housekeepers of a certain low rental ; 
and in the shires, Vane pressed earnestly the neces- 
sity of extending the franchise, urging the danger of 
vesting it " in those tenants whose tenure of estate 
subjected them to perpetual control." It is distinctly 
to be noticed that the scheme of Vane was not revo- 
lutionary. He wanted nothing not " consonant to 
the principles which have given rise to the law and 
monarchy itself in England." In those days the 
origin of English institutions was scarcely less well 
understood than in our own time. 1 He recognized 
I in Parliament the supreme authority, descended from 
the ancient assemblies which in their time had had 
the supreme authority. He wished to connect the 
franchise with a fixed though a low amount of prop- 
erty, feeling apparently the expediency of requiring 
that the voters should have " some stake in the coun- 
try," in order to quicken their patriotism. While the 
reform in Parliament which he favored tended to an 
increased preponderance of the middle class, he yet 
wanted no sweeping change. As has been seen, his 

1 See a remarkable book on the eral interpretations of the consti- 

f " Laws and Government of Eng- tution from the same period may 

land, collected from some ma/ut- be found in Somers Tracts, vol. iv. 

script notes of Joint Selden by Na- " The form of Government of the 

thaniel Bacon" in which substan- Kingdom of England" and "A 

tially the same account of the short Treatise on the Laws of 

British Constitution is given as England" by W. Mantell. Tho- 

by Gneist, Stubbs, Freeman, and masson, xlii. 
other modern writers. Other lib- 



1 653.] THE DISSOLUTION OF THE RUMP. 405 

Republicanism, like that of Ireton and Cromwell, 
had been a very gradual growth. He was at first 
not at all an enemy to the King. Only because the 
King was in his arbitrary notions so utterly incor- 
rigible was he gradually led into the thought that it 
would be better to do away with a King, at any rate, 
in the old sense of the word. Let it be always re- 
membered that in the bill of 1653 for the dissolution 
of the old and the election of the new Parliament, 
the principle of the sovereignty of the People was 
not to be fully carried out : the Rump was to re- 
main as a part of the new assembly, and the Rump 
was to manage the new elections — this that there 
might be security that the Commonwealth would not 
be swamped by the Royalists and Anti-tolerationists 
who formed a majority of the nation. 1 

Thus, then, the two factions stood in April. Both 
were eager for dissolution, — the group of which 
Vane was the centre desiring dissolution with the 
bill, — the group of which Cromwell was the centre 
desiring it zvitlwut the bill. April 13, the bill was 
last before the House, and it was to come on again 
April 20. On the 19th a meeting took place at 
Whitehall between Cromwell and his friends and the 
chiefs of the Rump, in which a last attempt was 
made to come to an agreement. So far as can be 
ascertained from the speech of Cromwell a few days 
after, 2 and from Whitlocke's report, 3 the Rump men 

1 Bisset, History of Common- further his own aims. For what 

wealth, ii. 410, 462, finds no proof may be said pro and con, see 

that the bill provided for the per- Masson, iv. 409. 

petuation of the Rump, and thinks 2 Carlyle, ii. 43. 

that Cromwell spread this idea to 8 Whitlocke, under date Apr. 20. 



406 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1653. 

hinted that if the bill, the thing which separated 
them, were dropped, the only alternative was the 
continuance of the power of the Rump ; upon which 
Cromwell urged his scheme for the select Council 
of some forty " well-affected " men, which he insisted 
on as at least " five times better than theirs." The 
wrangle went on until late at night, the most that 
the Rump men would promise being that they would 
consider and consult with friends, two or three un- 
dertaking at the last to "endeavor to suspend farther 
proceedings about their bill," until there had been 
further discussion. " They told us, they would take 
time for the consideration of these things till to- 
morrow; they would sleep upon them and consult 
some friends : ' some friends,' though, as I said, there 
were about twenty-three of them here, and not above 
fifty-three in the House. And at parting one of the 
chief [Sir Harry Vane] and two or three more, 
did tell us, that they would endeavor to suspend fur- 
ther proceedings, until they had another conference 
with us." 1 Next morning, while a few of the Rump 
men and officers, with Cromwell, were resuming the 
discussion, word was brought that the bill was on in 
the House, and that it was being hurried through its 
last stages. All unnecessary formalities were being 
neglected with regard to it, and it was on the point 
of becoming law. Cromwell, feeling that the agree- 
ment of the night before had been broken, hurried 
to St. Stephen's, and the scene took place, one of the 
most dramatic, picturesque, and critical, in his career 
and also in that of Vane. 

1 Carlyle, ii. 44. That Vane was ised to suspend action is a suppo- 
the " one of the chief " who prom- sition of Carlyle's quite gratuitous. 



1 653.] THE DISSOLUTION OF THE RUMP. 407 

Let us call up a picture of the beautiful chapel of 
St. Stephen's that 20th of April, the spring morning 
sun coming in through the great eastern window, 
shining upon the canopy over Speaker Lenthall's 
chair, then striking the long rows of benches. These, 
made to accommodate a company of five hundred, 
are for the most part quite empty, well covered with 
dust we may suppose, while a little company, scarcely 
a sixth part of the great Long Parliament which 
gathered in November thirteen years before, sit 
grouped on the lower seats, about the table with its 
mace. Vane is on his feet, still young Sir Harry 
(for in the Rump close by him sits his inevitable 
father), forty-one years old, with a presence full of 
extraordinary energy, his every word received with the 
deepest respect. What a share he has had in guid- 
ing events during the twelve tremendous years just 
past ! and he still remains the administrative colossus 
upon whom mainly rests the burden of the vast war, 
which demands every man, gun, and timber which 
the Commonwealth can raise. No one can fathom 
his serpent-wisdom ; no one define like him the 
" bounds of either sword," in the political perplexities, 
assigning each to its due sphere, the temporal and the 
spiritual. It is a serious company — in steeple-hats 
and sad-colored doublets, the strong countenances 
sobered by familiarity with peril and responsibility, 
and the discipline of the severe Puritan faith. These 
men are listening to him on whose firm hand Reli- 
gion leans as upon that of an elder son. Let us take 
the report of Ludlow. 1 

1 Memoirs, ii. 455 etc. 



408 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1653. 

" The Parliament now perceiving to what kind of 
excesses the madness of the Army was like to carry 
them, resolved to leave as a legacy to the people the 
government of a commonwealth by their represen- 
tatives when assembled in Parliament, and in the in- 
tervals thereof by a Council of State, chosen by 
them, and to continue till the meeting of the next 
succeeding Parliament, to whom they were to give 
an account of their conduct and management. To 
this end they resolved, without any further delay, to 
pass the act for their own dissolution; of which 
Cromwell having notice, makes haste to the House, 
where he sat down and heard the debate for some 
time. Then calling to Maj. Gen. Harrison, who was 
on the other side of the House, to come to him, he 
told him that he judged the Parliament -ripe for a 
dissolution, and this to be the time of doing it. The 
Maj. Gen. answered, as he since told me : ' Sir, the 
work is very great and dangerous, therefore I de- 
sire you seriously to consider of it before you en- 
gage in it.' ' You say well,' replied the General, and 
thereupon sat still for about a quarter of an hour, and 
then the question for passing the bill being to be 
put, he said again to Maj. Gen e Harrison, ' This is 
the time, I must do it ; ' and suddenly standing up, 
made a speech, wherein he loaded the Parliament 
with the vilest reproaches, charging them not to 
have a heart to do anything for the public good, to 
have espoused the corrupt interest of Presbytery and 
the lawyers, who were the supporters of tyranny and 
oppression, accusing them of an intention to perpet- 
uate themselves in power, had they not been forced 



I653-] THE DISSOLUTION OF THE RUMP. 409 

to the passing of this act, which he affirmed they de- 
signed never to observe, and thereupon told them, 
that the Lord had done with them, and had chosen 
other instruments for the carrying on his work 
that were more worthy. This he spoke with so 
much passion and discomposure of mind as if he had 
been distracted. Sir Peter Wentworth stood up to 
answer him and said, that this was the first time that 
ever he had heard such unbecoming language given 
to the Parliament, and that it was the more horrid in 
that it came from their servant and their servant 
whom they had so highly trusted and obliged ; but 
as he was going on, the General stepped into the 
midst of the House, where continuing his distracted 
language, he said, ' Come, come, I will put an end 
to your prating;' then walking up and down the 
House like a madman, and kicking the ground with 
his feet, he cried out, ' You are no Parliament, I say 
you are no Parliament; I will put an end to your 
sitting ; call them in, call them in.' Whereupon the 
sergeant attending the Parliament opened the doors 
and Lieut. Col. Worsley with two files of musketeers 
entered the House ; which Sir Henry Vane observ- 
ing from his place, said aloud, ' This is not honest, 
yea, it is against morality and common honesty.' 
Then Cromwell fell a railing at him, crying out with 
a loud voice, ' O, Sir Henry Vane, Sir Henry Vane, 
the Lord deliver me from Sir Henry Vane.' Then 
looking upon one of the members, he said, ' There 
sits a drunkard ; ' and giving much reviling language 
to others he commanded the mace to be taken away, 
saying, ' What shall we do with this bauble ? here, 



4IO YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1653. 

take it away ! ' Having brought all into this dis- 
order, Maj. Gen. Harrison went to the Speaker as he 
sat in the chair and told him, that seeing things were 
reduced to this pass, it would not be convenient for 
him to remain there. The Speaker answered that 
he would not come down unless he were forced. ' Sir,' 
said Harrison, ' I will lend you my hand ; ' and 
thereupon, putting his hand within his, the Speaker 
came down. Then Cromwell applied himself to the 
members of the House, who were in number between 
eighty and one hundred, and said to them : ' Its you 
that have forced me to this, for I have sought the 
Lord night and day that he should rather slay me 
than put me upon the doing of this work.' He or- 
dered the guard to see the House cleared of all the 
members, and then seized upon the records that 
were there and at Mr. Scobell's 1 house. After which 
he went to the clerk, and snatching the Act of Dis- 
solution, which was ready to pass, out of his hand, he 
put it under his cloak, and having commanded the 
doors to be locked up, went away to Whitehall." 

Ludlow, though in Ireland at the time, had most 
diligently collected the facts, and may be relied upon 
almost as if he were an eye-witness. The other im- 
portant authorities for this great scene are the Earl 
of Leicester, 2 father of Algernon Sidney, and Whit- 
locke. Sidney was present, and the Earl reports in 
his journal what he had heard from his son. Some 
details may be here gleaned which lend interest to 

1 The clerk. Sidney papers, edited by R. W. 

2 Leicester's Journal, in the Blencowe, pp. 139, 140, 141. 



1 653.] THE DISSOLUTION OF THE RUMP. 4 1 1 

the account. Cromwell, for instance, comes " in plain 
black clothes, with grey worsted stockings." When 
he began to speak, he at first commended Parlia- 
ment, at last changing his tone into denunciation, 
his anger rising as he stamped up and down the hall 
with his hat on. In the two files of musketeers with 
whom Worsley : entered there were twenty or thirty 
men. Speaker Lenthall had before this shown him- 
self stout-hearted in maintaining the dignity of his 
place, confronting Charles in 1642, when Charles 
strode in upon that same floor to arrest the Five 
Members, as he now faced the wrath of Cromwell. 
Algernon Sidney sat next to Lenthall, and Crom- 
well said to Harrison, " Put him out." Sidney re- 
fusing to go, Cromwell thundered again, " Put him 
out ! " whereupon Harrison and Worsley put their 
hands on his shoulders to force him out. The ex- 
clamation to Vane stands in Leicester's Journal 
altogether different from Ludlow's report. " At the 
going out the Generall said to young Sir Henry 
Vane, calling him by his name, that he might have 
prevented this extraordinary course, but he was a 
Juggler, and had not so much as common honesty." 

These words do not at all necessarily imply that 
at this time Cromwell and Vane were seriously 
estranged. As to the charge of being " a juggler," 

1 Worsley became Major-Gen- skeleton of Worsley, — that of a 
eral, was a great favorite with tall man, with well -formed head 
Cromwell, and was even thought and teeth fresh and bright, the 
of as his successor in the Protec- larger ligatures of the body still 
torate. He died, however, at thirty- traceable. A curious reappear- 
five, in 1656, and was interred in ance of one of the heroes of the 
Henry Vllth's Chapel. In 1868 Dissolution of the Rump ! Stan- 
Dean Stanley, searching for the ley's Memorials of Westminster 
coffin of James I, unearthed the Abbey, p. 674 etc. 



412 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1653. 

Oliver may have had in his thought some of young 
Sir Harry's theological disquisitions, by which Oliver, 
like men in general, found himself completely dazed. 
As to Vane's want of " common honesty," Cromwell 
might well have had in mind the conference of the 
previous evening, and what he then understood to be 
the agreement, that the pressing of the Act of Dis- 
solution should be postponed until there had been 
further discussion, — an agreement which no doubt, 
judging by events, some other Rump man than Vane 
assented to, and by which Vane, therefore, did not feel 
bound. After this time, efforts were made, as will be 
seen, to induce Sir Harry to take part in the new 
order, — just as in 1649, when he had withdrawn 
displeased by Pride's Purge and the execution of 
the King. In this second exigency he declines to 
return to public life, but implies in his language that 
he and Cromwell are still friends. Cromwell's excla- 
mation at the Dissolution of the Rump was, no doubt, 
an outburst of momentary passion. Probably no 
grave estrangement between the friends came about 
until the time of the " Healing Question " and Vane's 
imprisonment, in 1656. 

No touches can be added to those of the old writ- 
ers to make the scene more vivid. Cromwell strode 
off to Whitehall, with the Act of Dissolution under 
his cloak. Soon after a paper was found posted on 
the door of the Parliament House : " This House to 
be Let, now Unfurnished." Later in the day the 
Council of State was also summarily dismissed, Brad- 
shaw signalizing himself by spirited behavior. Hence- 
forth for five years the will of Cromwell was abso- 
lute in England. 



i6s3-] THE DISSOLUTION OF THE RUMP. 413 

Both old and new writers, Royalist and Repub- 
lican, 1 have seen nothing but selfish ambition in this 
seizure by Cromwell, through military force, of auto- 
cratic power. Since Carlyle gave to the world the 
letters and speeches of the wonderful man, the candid 
have judged differently. He had abundant human 
limitations without doubt; but one cannot read those 
strange outpourings, so unstudied, so incoherent, 
so artless, full of such devotional fervors, such up- 
wellings of fine aspiration, of pathos so deep that 
the page seems almost to bear the stain of tears, 
without feeling that he was nobly patriotic, and that 
with utter sacrifice of himself he took upon his great 
shoulders his bleeding country with no desire but to 
save her. In forsaking the Republicanism for which 
he had fought so long and gloriously, and usurp- 
ing the sceptre, he thought he was taking the only 
means possible to save the country from terrible dis- 
aster. The Rump seemed to him inadequate: the 
land must not be left in the hands of those who had 
never fought for it : he had perhaps a foreboding 
that his own influence would decay. What he had 
done for his country entitled him to be looked upon 
as its father almost. He loved it like a father, — in 
proud self-confidence felt that he could judge as no 
other could for its welfare. Ought he not to strike 
before his prestige had sunk ? His reasoning was 
like that. The moment of decision came, and he 
roughly stamped out what he thought had lasted too 
long. He meant that his dictatorship should be 

1 Clarendon, Ludlow, Echard, Hume, Whitlocke, Godwin, Forster, 
etc. 



414 % YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1653. 

only temporary, intending to give power to the na- 
tion as soon as the nation could bear it. Though 
the ' Barebones ' or Little Parliament was appointed 
by himself, he caused a Parliament to be elected, fol- 
lowing narrowly the provisions of the Act which he 
had snatched from the clerk on that memorable 20th 
of April. This Parliament acted, in his view, un- 
wisely, and he sent it home unceremoniously. Again 
at a later stage he caused still another Parliament to 
be elected in a similar way : this, too, he presently 
dismissed as foolish and inadequate. The day never 
came when Cromwell felt he could cease to be a 
despot. With almost miraculous ability he sustained 
himself, ability no more conspicuous in dealing with 
foreign and open enemies than against the constant 
plots of secret foes. His old mother at Whitehall 
shivered whenever she heard the report of a gun or 
an unusual crash, through fear that some assassin 
had at length found the heart of her son, — and it 
was no foolish fear. Dividing England up into mili- 
tary districts, over each one of which he set a Major 
General, a grim Ironside whose sword was absolute, 
he ruled with an unconstitutional tyranny compared 
with which that of the Stuarts was mere child's play. 
When at last his mi^htv hand relaxed, nothing was 
possible but the Restoration. His rule brought to 
England glory and prosperity, but as helping toward 
freedom no failure was ever more complete. 

Would the plan of Vane — that for the perpetu- 
ation and recruitment of the great Long Parliament 
until the nation could safely be trusted with the man- 
agement of itself — have served any better purpose ? 



1653] THE DISSOLUTION OF THE RUMP. 415 

Probably not : nor can it be believed that success 
would have followed a third possible course, the sur- 
rendering of power into the hands of a free Parlia- 
ment, elected on Ireton's plan immediately after the 
battle of Worcester. The world was in truth not 
ready 1 for the ideas of the Honest Party. Prejudices 
were too inveterate : prescriptions and traditions 
would not loose their hold. A noble Toleration, a 
doing away with Monarch and privileged class that a 
Commonwealth might come to pass in which each 
reputable citizen should have an equal voice — these 
were ideas for which the world could be only slowly 
prepared. Only after a hundred years and under 
American conditions could such ideas become prac- 
tical. 

The Rump went down to the great grief of many, 
though Cromwell said, " We did not hear a dog bark 
at their going." It was not safe to speak loud. The 
fleet, which in particular it had created and fostered, 
hastened with a melancholy eagerness to thank 
Cromwell for delivering them from " the intolerable 
oppression and tyranny of Parliament." 2 To this 
manifesto the names of Dean, Monk, and many cap- 
tains were affixed. Blake is believed to have seen 
the downfall regretfully, though he told his sailors it 
was their business to face the foreign foe, and not 
concern themselves with changes at home. Even 
Milton was among: the calumniators of the Parlia- 



*& 



1 Gneist : Geschichte und heutige Gestalt der Aemter in England, 
226 etc. 

2 Godwin, iii. 478. 



41 6 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1653. 

ment. As the world now looks back to those four 
years, it is seen that in all English history there is 
no other such spot of light. Quite within bounds 
are the words of Algernon Sidney : * " When Van 
Tromp set upon Blake in Folkestone Bay, the Par- 
liament had not above thirteen ships against three- 
score, and not a man that had ever seen any other 
fight at sea, than between a merchant-ship and a pi- 
rate, to oppose the best captain in the world. But 
such was the power of wisdom and integrity in those 
that sat at the helm, and their diligence in choosing 
men only for their merit was attended with such 
success, that in two years our fleets grew to be 
as famous as our land armies, and the reputation 
and power of our nation rose to a greater height 
than when we possessed the better half of France 
and had the Kings of France and Scotland for our 
prisoners." 

Still more significant is the testimony which God- 
win quotes from Roger Coke, a Royalist, " a bitter 
and scornful enemy." " Thus by their own merce- 
nary servants, and not a sword drawn in their defence, 
fell the haughty and victorious Rump, whose mighty 
actions will scarcely find belief in future generations ; 
and to say the truth, they were a race of men most 
indefatigable and industrious in business, always 
seeking for men fit for it, and never preferring any 
for favor nor by importunity. You scarce ever heard 
of any revolting from them ; no murmur or com- 
plaint of seamen or soldiers ; nor do I find that they 

1 Godwin, iii. 465. See also the tributes of Ludlow and Mrs. Hutch- 
inson. 



1 659.] THE DISSOLUTION OF THE RUMP. 417 

ever pressed any in all their wars. 1 And as they ex- 
celled in the management of civil affairs, so it must 
be owned they exercised in matters ecclesiastic no 
such severities as either the Covenanters or others 
before them did, upon such as dissented from them ; 
nor were they less forward in reforming the abuses 
of the common law." 

We have heard the regicide Thomas Scott defend 
the execution of the King. It is worth while to hear 
how Scott defended the " fag-end of the Long Par- 
liament," in years long after its great work was done. 2 
" The Dutch war came on. If it had pleased God 
and his highness Oliver to let that little power of a 
Parliament sit a little longer (when Hannibal is ad 
portas, something must be done extra leges) we in- 
tended to have gone off with a good savor, and pro- 
vided for a succession of Parliaments ; but we stayed 
to end the Dutch war. We might have brought them 
to oneness with us. Their ambassadors did desire a 
coalition. This we might have done in four or five 
months. We never bid fairer for being masters of 
the whole world — not that I desire to extend our 
own bounds. . . . That gentleman says the Parlia- 
ment went out, and no complaining in the streets, 
nor inquiry after them. That is according to the 
company men keep. Men suit the letter to their 
lips. It is as men converse. I never met a zealous 
assertor of that cause but lamented it to see faith 
broken and somewhat else." 

1 This can by no means be al- - Forster's Henry Marten, p. 
leged. 385. 



41 8 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1659. 

Noble years, indeed, are they, and in the landscape 
of the time three figures range far above their com- 
peers — figures then not far from equal in the eyes 
of men, though one was destined to tower afterwards 
much higher — Cromwell upon the war-horse, Blake 
upon the deck of the " Triumph," and Vane at West- 
minster, the heart of Parliament and of the Council 
of State. 



PART IV. 

TO TOWER-HILL. 
1653-1662. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE HEALING QUESTION. 

For the first time in thirteen years Vane was in 
retirement, if we except the few weeks just before 
and after the execution of the King. He went with- 
out doubt to the noble home of the Vanes, Raby 
Castle in Durham, where we may suppose he was al- 
most a stranger ; for his absorption in the perils had 
given him scarcely opportunity, since the opening of 
the Long Parliament, to go so far from his place at 
Westminster. Raby Castle, bought by old Sir Harry 
after it had been long the seat of the Nevilles, is still 
thoroughly maintained and preserved though por- 
tions of it go back to the Danish invasions, the lordly 
place to-day of Vane's descendant, the Duke of 
Cleveland. As the present writer rode toward it, on 
a fine clear day at the end of summer, the highway 
passed over low hills, moor-land, and rich fields on 
which grazed the cattle that have made the shire 
famous. The fine mass of Raby Castle appeared at 



420 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1653. 

last in the distance, across the broad park where 
herds of deer were feeding. It is substantially as it 
was in the time of the Civil War, except that the 
wall, thirty feet high, which then surrounded it, has 
been for the most part removed. From the gateway 
on the east the eye follows an outline picturesquely 
broken, keep, curtain of masonry, tower, and inner 
portal, all battlemented and darkly grim, as when 
young George Vane, brother of our Sir Harry, held 
it stoutly against more than one cavalier siege. From 
within the court, where many a war-like troop has 
gathered, the clash of their arms echoing loudly from 
the high enclosing walls, one enters the great struc- 
ture, passing through crypt and corridor, into cham- 
bers with windows cut through thick masonry, then 
from the high Barons' Hall x down the broad stair- 
way where a regiment might march almost without 
breaking ranks. There were nooks whose rugged 
strength had been gained from trowels and hammers 
that wrought in the days of Canute. Upon a beau- 
tiful pedestal elsewhere stood Powers's Greek Slave, 
the original statue. So one went from the eleventh 
century to the nineteenth, and there was no age be- 
tween of which some curious carving, some strangely 
framed timber, some antique press, or contorted piece 
of iron work, did not bear witness. All ancient rude- 
ness, however, was softened away or made to minis- 
ter to modern elegant comfort. The loop-hole from 
which the men-at-arms of the Border Wars had dis- 

1 "Seven hundred knights, retainers all 
Of Neville, at their master's call 
Had sate together in Raby's hall." 

Wordsworth, White Doe of Rylstone, Canto III. 



1653.] THE HEALING QUESTION. 42 I 

charged their crossbows holds now, as in a frame, 
before the outlooking visitor a lovely glimpse of the 
park : the culverins that roared defiance in the days 
of the Henrys lend picturesqueness to the little ter- 
race among the flowers : in the castle kitchen are still 
the cavernous fire-place, the cranes, the great spits of 
the ancient cooks, but a range of- the most modern 
fashion serves for the present housekeeping, the old 
appurtenances adapting themselves to the changed 
order : there is still water in the moat, but it is the 
swimming-place now of the Duke's swans. In the 
Barons' Hall and the rooms near by, a long line of 
portraits running back to ancient armored knights 
presents the masters of Raby, finest in the series the 
grave face of the man whom Cromwell, Republican, 
wore in his heart of hearts, — from whom Cromwell, 
despot, prayed that the Lord would deliver him. 
Among all the stately homes of England there is 
scarcely one statelier. 

Hither came Vane dismissed. He had sprung, let 
it be remembered, from the inner circle of the privi- 
leged class of his land. His ancestor had received 
the accolade from the sword of the Black Prince on 
the field of Poictiers ; the Vane arms proudly bore 
the dexter gauntlet of the captive King of France, 
given to that ancestor in token of submission ; and in 
the generations since, traditions had accumulated of 
the favor of Sovereigns and of all the splendor that 
attends high rank. What a mark of greatness that 
one so fathered and so circumstanced should yet 
have become so thoroughly a man of the People, 
the representative of ideas so thoroughly American ! 



422 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1653. 

One wishes that a glimpse into Vane's domestic life 
were recoverable. We shall come before long upon 
evidence, amid scenes of great sadness, that he was a 
loving husband and father, but no picture can now 
be given of his life with his wife and children. 1 Dur- 
ing his public career his absorption had been so 
great that only transient intervals of domestic quiet, 
at his house in Charing Cross, and his seat ' Belleau,' 
in Lincolnshire, can have been possible to him. The 
family of Lady Vane were people of force and influ- 
ence. Her father, Sir Christopher Wray, was a mem- 
ber of the Long Parliament, capable sometimes of 
spirited conduct, as were also her brothers. 2 Of 
Lady Vane herself, however, we know nothing except 
what may be inferred from such a connection. Roger 
Williams dedicates to her one of his books, and 
seems to have held her in respect. 3 Of children 
there were seven sons, five of whom died before their 
father, 4 and five daughters. Vane's line descends 
from his youngest son Christopher, born in 1653. Of 
Sir Harry's brothers we already know Charles, as 
serving the Commonwealth boldly and skilfully in 
the character of envoy to Portugal, and as having a 
creditable prominence while supporting Voluntary- 
ism in 1652, in opposition to the State Church and 
the somewhat limited toleration which the more 

1 The Duke of Cleveland, while 8 " I have received a large and 
authorizing me to inspect Raby pious letter from Lady Vane." 
Castle, informed me that no man- R. W. to Joh. Winthrop, Jr., Oct. 
uscripts or documents remained 25, 1649. Narragansett Papers, 
in the family which could be of vi. 187. 

any use to the biographer. 4 Burke's Peerage, art. " Vane." 

2 Gardiner, Great Civil War, 
*• 357- 



1653] THE HEALING QUESTION. 423 

timid favored. Mention has been made of George, 
who seems to have remained at Raby, and who de- 
fended it against the Cavalier attacks. Old Sir 
Harry is still upon his feet and at the front. As com- 
pliant as his son was uncompromising, he pocketed 
his principles serenely at the coup d'etat of Crom- 
well, sitting presently in his old place in Parliament. 
From a member of the Long Parliament he became 
a supporter of the despotism, as at a former time he 
had come to the Long Parliament from the right 
hand of the King. Had his life been prolonged, it 
is reasonable to suppose that another somersault 
would have landed him at the Restoration, once 
more at the side of a Stuart. He found, however, no 
more opportunities. He died in 1654, and our Sir 
Harry ceased to be " young." As we dismiss the 
father, let us treat him with no unkindness. In times 
of revolution excellent men become turn-coats. For 
every change the old ex-courtier made, a good rea- 
son could be given, and in every change he had com- 
pany of the best. By the side of his towering son 
he stood dwarfed to a point almost pathetic, but 
there is abundant evidence that while not conspicu- 
ous for elevation of character he was yet a trusted 
and useful public servant. His knowledge of for- 
eign tongues and diplomatic experience made him 
often important. His " bustling " was often to good 
purpose. That he must have been respected is plain 
from the responsibilities with which he was entrusted, 
for " he was in commission with the greatest men of 
the nation and at the head of all affairs." 1 Father 

1 Collins's Peerage, iv. 302. 



424 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1654. 

and son seem always to have been on the best terms, 
excepting for the short space in 1641, when young 
Sir Henry revealed, against . Strafford, the secrets of 
his father's " red velvet cabinet." 

The leisure in which Vane now found himself he 
spent probably more at Belleau than at Raby Castle. 
In a l£tter belonging to this period he lends a hand, 
from his Lincolnshire seat, to his friend Roger Wil- 
liams, sorely tried by his motley crowd at Providence. 

" Lovinge and Christian Friends : I could not re- 
fuse this bearer, Mr. Roger Williams, my kinde friend 
and ancient acquaintance, to be accompanied with 
these few lines from myself to you, upon his returne 
to Providence Colony ; though, perhaps, my private 
and retired condition, which the Lord, of his mercy, 
hath brought me into, might have argued strongly 
enough for my silence ; but indeed, something I hold 
myself bound to say to you, out of the Christian love 
I bear you, and for his sake whose name is called 
upon by you and engaged in your behalfe. How is 
it that there are such divisions amongst you ? Such 
headiness, tumults, disorders and injustice ? The 
noise echoes into the ears of all, as well friends as 
enemies, by every returne of shipps from those parts. 
Is not the fear and awe of God amongst you to re- 
straine ? Is not the love of Christ in you, to fill you 
with yearninge bowells, one towards another, and 
constrain you not to live to yourselves, but to him 
that died for you, yea, and is risen again ? Are 
there no wise men amongst you ? No public self- 
denying spirits, that at least, upon the grounds of 



I6S4-] THE HEALING QUESTION. 425 

public safety, equity and prudence, can find out some 
way or meanes of union and reconciliation for you 
amongst yourselves, before you become a prey to 
common enemies, especially since this State, by the 
last letter from the Council of State, gave you your 
freedom, as supposing a better use would have been 
made of it than there hath been ? Surely, when 
kind and simple remedies are applied and are inef- 
fectuall, it speaks loud and broadly the high and dan- 
gerous distempers of such a body, as if the wounds 
were incurable. But I hope better things from you, 
though I thus speak, and should be apt to think, that 
by Commissioners agreed upon and appointed in all 
parts, and on behalfe of all interests, in a generall 
meeting, such a union and common satisfaction 
might arise, as, through God's blessing, might put a 
stop to your growinge breaches and distractions, si- 
lence your enemies, encourage your friends, honor 
the name of God which of late hath been much 
blasphemed, by reason of you, and in particular, re- 
fresh and revive the sad heart of him who mourns 
over your present evils, as being your affectionate 
friend, to serve you in the Lord. H. Vane. 
Belleaw, the 8th of February, 1653-4." 

To this, in a letter signed " Gregorie Dexter, 
Towne Clerke," which has much of the spirit and 
manner of Roger Williams, Providence replied : 2 

" We were in complete order until we were greatly 
disturbed and distracted by the ambition and covet- 

1 Rhode Island Colonial Records, vol. i. 285. 2 Ibid. 287. 



426 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1654. 

ousness of some, who, wanting that public and self- 
denying spirit which you commend to us in your 
letter, occasioned our general disturbance and dis- 
traction. Possibly some of ourselves, are grown 
wanton and too active ; for we have drunk of the 
sweet cup of as great libertie as any people that we 
can hear of under the whole heaven. We have not 
only been free from the iron yokes of wolfish Bi- 
shops, but have sitten quiet and dry from the stream 
of blood spilt by the Civil War in our native Coun- 
try. W T e have not felt the new chains of the Pres- 
byterian tyrants, nor consumed by the over zealous 
fire of those called godly Christian magistrates. We 
have almost forgot what tythes are, yea, and taxes 
too, — either to Church or Commonwealth. We 
have also enjoyed the sweet privileges, and such you 
know are very powerful to render the best of men 
wanton and forgetful. We hope you shall have no 
more occasion to complain of the men of Providence 
town or Providence colony, but that when we are 
gone and rotten, our posterity shall read in the town 
records your pious and favourable letters and loving- 
kindness to us, and this our answer and real endeav- 
ours after peace and righteousness." 

Vane was no doubt glad to lay down public life. 
" There is none that know the frame of his spirit," 
wrote an intimate friend, 1 " but can bear me witness 
that if the cause of God and the good of his people 
among us did not prevail mightily upon him he 
had rather enjoy a retiredness under the immediate 

1 Stubbe : Malice Rebuked. A Vindication of Sir Henry Vane, 1659, 
P-55- 



i655-] THE HEALING QUESTION. 427 

teachings of God's spirit than be taken up with dis- 
tracting employments in Parliaments and Councils." 

Interesting proofs are preserved which indicate 
that Cromwell and Vane, in the years after the Disso- 
lution of the Rump, yearned for one another in spite 
of their differences. Thurloe, who had been St. 
John's secretary in Holland, had come to stand in 
the same relation to Cromwell. He was a great 
figure among the Cromwellians now, and has put 
posterity under a special obligation by his " State 
Papers," a collection of bulky tomes, in which many 
valuable documents are treasured. Toward the 
close of 1655, Cromwell seems to have written Vane 
a most friendly note enclosed in one from Thurloe, 
to which Vane responds from Belleau, December 20, 
1655. 1 "The enclosed I have received. . . . I desire 
not to be insensible of the civility intended mee in it 
by the first hand, which accordingly I desire you to 
represent in the fittest manner you please, from one 
who upon those primitive grounds of publick-spirit- 
edness and sincere love to our country and the godly 
party in it, am still the same as ever, both in true 
friendship to his person, and in unchangeable fidelity 
to the cause so solemnly engaged in by us." 

Before this time, Roger Williams speaks 2 of Vane 
as " returned into Lincolnshire, yet daily missed and 
courted for his assistance : " and still earlier, June 3d, 
1653, a letter from a Royalist spy in London, intended 
for the Hague but intercepted, says: 3 " Young Sir 

1 Thurloe, State Papers, iv. 329. 

2 Letter to Winthrop, July 12, 1654, Narragansett Papers, vi. 260. 

3 Thurloe, State Papers, i. 265. 



428 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1656- 

H. Vane, notwithstanding the affronts he received at 
the dissolution of the Parliament, was invited, being 
in Lincolnshire, by a letter from the Council : which 
invitation he answered by a letter extracted out of 
that part of the Apocalypse, wherein the reign of the 
saints is mentioned, which he saith he believes will 
now begin : but for his part he is willing to defer his 
share in it until he come to heaven, and desired to 
be excused in yielding to their desires." 

But however it may have been with Cromwell, the 
feeling of his party toward Vane may be inferred 
from some sentences of Henry Cromwell, Oliver's 
second son, an able man, now in high command in 
Ireland. Writing to Thurloe under date February 
6, 1656, 1 he complains of the Quakers as making 
trouble among the soldiers, " our most considerable 
enemy. ... I wish they be not too much slighted in 
England. Sir H. Vane and such like, who are as 
rotten in their principles, can make good use of such 
delusions as these, Fifth Monarchy and the like, to 
carry on their designs." Some one has written " that 
Sir Henry Vane goes up and down among those peo- 
ple and others, endeavoring to withdraw them from 
their submission to the present government. . . . His 
expression concerning him is, that if he be not pre- 
vented he will be a sad scourge to England. I hope 
you will send none of the breed of him into Ireland." 

When Henry Cromwell speaks of Vane as using 
" delusions, Fifth Monarchy and the like," and when 
the spy declares that the Knight of Raby believed 
that the reign of the saints was now about to begin, 

1 Thurloe, iv. 508, 509. 



1656.] THE HEALING QUESTION. 429 

it can by no means be said that there were no 
grounds for such representations. There was in fact 
a strange side to the character of Vane, of which 
heretofore some mention has been made, and which 
now must be more fully described. While he was 
ever astonishingly effective in all the practical work 
of statesmanship, — while in speech he could be so 
terse and direct, and while he was magnanimously 
tolerant of all beliefs, interposing no bar to any 
aberration, provided only the good order of society 
were not disturbed, he himself became devoted, as 
his life advanced, to wild speculations. Now, in his 
retirement, his active mind relieved itself in preaching 
and writing, his deliverances being often of a strain 
which confused many of his contemporaries, and are 
confusion thrice over to the modern reader. The 
so-called " Fifth Monarchy " ideas, — that after the 
domination in the world of the Assyrian, Persian, 
Greek, and Roman empires, the reign of Christ for 
a thousand years was at last about to begin, — ideas 
which occupied much the fanatical minds of that time, 
possessed a strong attraction for Vane. Mention 
must be made here of a book, " The Retired Man's 
Meditations," strangely profitless to a modern reader, 
written by Vane at this time, the concluding passage 
of which will give some idea of its character : 

" To be more particular in describing the state 
of things, as to the change which does respect the 
whole creature, during this thousand years, will be 
needlesse ; considering that the general expressions 
are so clear and full, that it shall be a glorious, pure, 
incorrupt state unto the whole of creation, which 



430 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1656. 

shall then keep a holy Sabbath and rest unto the 
Lord, a seventh part of the time of the world's con- 
tinuance, in which there shall be no sowing of the 
field nor pruning of the vineyard, nor exacting any 
labour from the creature, but what in voluntary ser- 
vice it shall performe by way of homage and worship 
unto for the use of his saints, during the 1,000 
years, who are yet in their corruptible natural body, 
expecting their great change. Even so, come Lord 
Jesus, come quickly." 

The following: extracts from works written a few 
years later than this imply a belief in an immediate 
and literal second coming of Christ, and the Fifth 
Monarchy : 

" What then remains for the recovery and restitu- 
tion of that good old Cause and Way, but such a rea- 
sonable and signal appearance of God, (as aforesaid) 
in the valley of Jehoshaphat ? What, but the taking 
things immediately into his own hands, for adminis- 
tration of Judgement, and giving the last and final 
decision ? Especially, since what was foretold by 
Daniel is remarkably accomplished among us, to wit, 
that the visible Power of God's People should be 
broken and scattered, so as that they should have no 
might remaining in and with them, to go against the 
Multitudes, that design and resolve their ruin. There 
is not any remedy left to them, wherein they may ex- 
pect success, but from such a signal day of the Lord's 
immediate appearance in Judgement on their behalf. 
For their sakes therefore O Lord, return thou on 
high (Psalms 7. 7) take thy Throne of Judicature, 
that righteous Judgement, which thou hast seemed 



i6s4] THE HEALING QUESTION. 43 1 

for a season to have suspended, upon wise and holy 
ends best known to thyself." * 

" By whom was this people (upon whom the name 
of God was called) brought under, persecuted and 
suppressed, but by those who were foretold by Dan. 
chap. 2, and most lively represented and described 
by the great image, which was the subject of Nebu- 
chadnezzar's dream, that none but Daniel could re- 
hearse and interpret, signifying the persons and their 
successors, that should be found possessing the uni- 
versal empire, and command of the world, during the 
continuance of those known four monarchs, that have 
followed successively one after another according as 
they were foretold and charactered out some thou- 
sand years ago, and are now standing upon their last 
legs, and time drawing on apace, when the spiritual 
seed of the same Abraham shall be made heirs even 
of the world, by faith ? and what was done by Abra- 
ham, in figure and type as to his conquest over the 
four kings, (Gen. 14,) must have its accomplishment 
in reality and truth, by those of his seed that are the 
true Israel in spirit, who by the spirit of life entering 
into them at the appointed time, together with the 
charge committed to them of pouring out the seven 
vials of the last plagues of God, shall bring the final 
downfall and destruction of those four monarchs, and 
in and with it of the kingdom of the beast and of 
antichrist ; and bring home again and receive the 
true Lots that have been sojourners in the Sodom of 
this world." 2 

1 From a piece called " The their biographies of Vane express 
Valley of fehoshaphat." an estimate of his theological writ- 

2 Epistle to the Scattered Seed ings very different from mine. 
of Christ. Forster and Upham in 



432 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1654. 

The following squib aimed at Vane by some ill- 
wisher contains without doubt among its poor wit 
some grain of truth. The catholicity of Vane's spirit 
appears even in the unfriendly picture. 

" At Raby, being my mansion ... I became my 
own chaplain, where I edified my congregation so 
powerfully in my principles, as the most of those hear- 
ers in my synagogue at Raby grew most heterodox- 
icall Rabbies. ... A Fifth Monarchy was our object ; 
and who those Regents should be we had positively 
voted, yet was it ever intended that this government 
should have its gradations. . . . There was neither Ar- 
minian, Socinian, Famulist, Anabaptist, Independent, 
nor Fanatick, whose acquaintance I admitted not, and 
with whose assertions for the time I complied not. 
These I over-wrought, won, and made mine own.'" 1 

To this may be added the following story, signifi- 
cant as showing how Vane in his latter days came to 
stand in the popular fancy. John Davenport writes 
to John Winthrop, Jr., from New Haven, the 1st 
day of the 6th month, 1660: 2 " Brother Streete re- 
porteth a strange passage which he heard at Boston, 
which, it may be, will minister some matter of laugh- 
ter unto you, as it cloth of indignation unto me. It is 
this. A company being mett somewhere in England, 
he thinckes they were Fifth Monarchy Men, and Sir 
Henry Vaine with them, it was propounded that, 
seeing Christ was not yet come, they should thinck 
of some one that should be cheife among them til he 

1 Sir Henry Vane's Politicks or 1 661, p. 11 etc. Thomasson Tracts, 
his Cases of Conscience, lately MDCCCXLIX. 
found in his Cabinet at Arabie, 2 Winthrop Papers, Mass. Hist. 

Coll. vii. 515 (4U1 series). 



1 654-] THE HEALING QUESTION. 433 

should come, and that being consented to, it was 
considered whom they should choose, and it was con- 
cluded with common consent, Sir Hen : Vaine : 
therefore one rose up with a viol of oile which he 
poured on Sir Hen: Vaine's head and called him 
King of Jerusalem. Sit fides penes autkorem." 

Davenport plainly thinks this mere calumny, and 
we may be certain there was exaggeration in such 
a report. Much of Vane's writing at this time, how- 
ever, is incoherent and superstitious, and it is quite 
probable that he showed in his conduct a corre- 
sponding extravagance. Such things, to be sure, be- 
longed to that day, and yet there is ample evidence 
that the men even of that time were dumfounded 
that a character who in one field was the embodi- 
ment of sense and strength should be in another an 
associate of those whom even they thought crazy 
extremists. We have seen that Cromwell, while his 
close friend, found him " in principles too high to 
fathom," and at length bursts out upon him as " a 
juggler." Cromwell was by no means alone, and 
Vane's political influence in his latter years seems to 
have been impaired by a distrust of his judgment. 

So much for the weakness of the strong man. It 
is pleasant to turn now to a memorable exhibition of 
his power, to an act of his life, namely, which perhaps 
more than any other is of interest to Americans, — 
his exposition of the idea of a Written Constitution. 1 

1 In the account which follows writer has been greatly aided by 
of Vane's connection with the a number of legal friends, among 
idea of a Written Constitution, the them, Dr. Wm. G. Hammond, 



434 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1656. 

The only unique feature of the American polity, as 
compared with the polities that preceded it, is the 
provision within it for a Written Constitution. The 
problem of the fathers was, as Lowell says, " to adapt 
English principles and precedents to the new condi- 
tions of American life," and the system which they 
formed for the United States is but a modified ver- 
sion of that of Great Britain as it existed between 
1 760 and 1787. The President is the British King of 
the eighteenth century — a magistrate elected, to be 
sure, for four years, instead of inheriting his position 
for life, but with powers and functions very similar 
to those of George III. A still closer resemblance 
exists between the House of Representatives and the 
House of Commons. The Senate and the House 
of Lords are less nearly analogous, but the former is 
nevertheless plainly foreshadowed in the latter. De- 
scending from these great central features to the 
lower ranges of administration, it is found that the 
entire apparatus throughout the States for the ren- 
dering of justice and for local self-government in 
town and county has come clown almost unchanged 
from the colonial period, constructed after the mod- 
els of the mother land. 1 

In the midst of this mass of traditions and imita- 
tions is imbedded one innovation, — the provision 
as regards each State and as regards the United 
States for a carefully formulated instrument to be 

Dean of the St. Louis Law School, of the St. Louis Bar, and Arthur 
Professor J. B. Thayer of the Har- Lord, Esq., of Plymouth, Mass. 
vard Law School, F. N. Judson, l See Sir Henry Maine: Popu- 
Esq., and I. H. Lionberger, Esq., lar Government, chapter on the 

American Constitution. 



1656.] THE HEALING QUESTION. 435 

drawn up by an assembly of representatives of the 
people distinct from the legislative assembly, — an 
instrument to be interpreted by a supreme tribunal 
specially empowered for that purpose, — an instru- 
ment by which the whole work of lawmaking shall 
be imperatively controlled. 

No such controlling instrument has guided the de- 
velopment of Great Britain, or of any other land. De 
Tocqueville declared : " En Angleterre, la Constitu- 
tion peut changer sans cesse ; on plutot elle n'existe 
pas." The English lawmakers are completely un- 
fettered. Says Blackstone : 1 " If the Parliament will 
positively enact a thing to be done, ... I know of 
no power . . . vested with authority to control it ; " 
upon which passage Christian, called by Dr. Francis 
Lieber, the ablest commentator on Blackstone, re- 
marks : 2 " If an act of Parliament should, like the 

1 Commentaries, i. 91. 118.) Coke's remark is said "not 

2 Lieber's Hermeneutics, Ham- to be extravagant, but a very rea- 
mond's ed. p. 161. See also Dicey, sonable and true saying," in the 
Law of the Constitution, p. 357, case of the City of London vs. 
2d ed. One may find, to be sure, Wood (12 Mod. 687). Lord Justice 
in old English law-writers the idea Hobart declares an act of Parlia- 
that there are fundamental princi- ment to be void, if "against natu- 
ples superior to Kings and Parlia- ral equity, — as to make a man 
ments. Coke, in his famous con- judge in his own cause." (Day vs. 
flict with James I, declared, follow- Savage, Hobart, 87.) These au- 
ing Bracton, Bk. I. ch. viii. sec. 5, thorities are somewhat in conflict 
that the King was "non sub with Blackstone and Christian as 
homine, but sub Deo and lege." quoted. The doctrine of the ab- 
(Campbell, Lives of the Ch. Jus- solute supremacy of Parliament is, 
tices, vol. I. ' Coke.') Again, he in fact, a modern one only gradu- 
declared : " Common law doth ally adopted. Jeremy Bentham 
control acts of Parliament and ad- proclaimed that nothing was supe- 
judgeth them void when against rior to legislation, and that is the 
common reason and right." (Dr. theory of to-day. 

Bonham's case, 8 Coke's Reps., 



436 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1656. 

edict of Herod, command all the children under a 
certain age to be slain, ... it could only be declared 
void by the high authority by which it was ordained." 
The Written Constitution as part of the polity of a 
people appears for the first time in America. It is 
the most distinctive feature of our system, and, more- 
over, that probably which has most value. 

" We have not yet," says Dr. W. G. Hammond, 1 
" fully learned the vast importance and momentous 
consequences of the new element that has been intro- 
duced into the science of government by . . . the 
recognition of two distinct and unequal grades of 
law (even though both derive their authority from the 
same supreme power, the People) one of which al- 
ways controls and limits the other, and cannot be 
changed or limited by it or by any of the ordinary 
processes of legislation : and consequent upon this 
the securing of the fundamental maxims of the gov- 
ernment, and its main features, against attacks of the 
persons in authority, while they are yet endowed with 
the powers necessary for the conduct of affairs." 
The Fathers put as many obstacles as they could 
contrive (to use again a phrase of Lowell's) " not in 
the way of the People's will, but of their whim : " 2 
above all is the Written Constitution a bridle upon 
popular whim. By this the People have shorn them- 
selves of a measure of their power, making themselves 
safe from themselves, and thus is imparted to govern- 
ment the highest practicable and desirable stability. 

No American estimate, however, can have such 

1 Western Jurist, April, 1869, p. 65 etc. 

2 Democracy, p. 24. 



1656.] THE HEALING QUESTION. 437 

weight as the testimony of observers who look at 
things from outside. Of such witnesses, one of the 
latest and most authoritative, Sir Henry Maine, speak- 
ing of England, declares : * "Of all the infirmities 
of our constitution in its decay, there is none more 
serious than the absence of any special precautions 
to be observed in passing laws which touch the very 
foundations of our political system. The nature of 
their weakness, and the character of the manifold and 
elaborate securities which are contrasted with it in 
America," Sir Henry Maine illustrates carefully, 
reaching " the surprising result that before a consti- 
tutional measure of gravity could become a law in 
the United States, it must have at the very least in 
its favour the concurring vote of no less than fifty- 
eight separate legislative chambers, independently of 
the Federal Legislature, in which a double two-thirds 
majority must be obtained. The alternative course 
permitted by the Constitution of calling separate 
special conventions of the United States and of the 
several states, would prove probably in practice even 
lengthier and more complicated. The great strength 
of these securities against hasty innovation has been 
shown beyond the possibility of mistake by the act- 
ual history of the Federal Constitution. . . . The 
provisions of the Constitution have acted upon the 
country like those dams and dykes which strike the 
eye of the traveler along the Rhine, controlling the 
course of a mighty river which begins amid mountain 
torrents, and turning it into one of the most equable 
water-ways in the world. . . . The signal success of 

1 Popular Government, chapter " The American Constitution." 



438 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1656. 

the Constitution of the United States in stemming 
evil tendencies . . . may well fill the Englishmen 
who now live in faece Romuli, with wonder and 
envy." 

What is history of the Constitutional Idea ? Al- 
though in its developed form it is not to be traced 
until the establishment of America, the beginnings 
of the notion must be sought far earlier. Possibly a 
germ may be found in Magna Charta, where it is or- 
dained that all things done afterwards violating in 
any way its provisions shall be null and void. An- 
other germ may be found in the charters by which 
the guilds of the Middle Ages were constituted. 1 
Each corporation found its grant of privileges ac- 
companied by a code of obligations, to which it was 
forced to conform under penalty of losing those 
privileges. The English settlement of America was 
made by great trading corporations, the charters of 
which, originally nothing more than grants made to 
guilds in true mediaeval fashion, ' perverted ' into 
instruments of government, stood behind the colonial 
assemblies, like the Constitutions behind the Legis- 
latures, State and Federal, of the American Union. 

An essential part of an American Constitution, 
however, is that it comes from the People. The 
People thus save themselves from themselves. 
Where and how enters into the idea this element 
of noble self-restriction ? Magna Charta, extorted, 
while as yet the People were voiceless, from John by 
the barons and churchmen, is in form a grant of 

1 Brooks Adams : Embryo of a Commonwealth, Atlantic Monthly, 
November, 1884. 



1656.] THE HEALING QUESTION. 439 

privilege and imposition of duty by the King. The 
charters of the mediaeval guilds are, in like manner, 
grants and impositions by the over-lord, — King, 
noble, or monastery, — the people as yet having no 
agency in the matter. For the entrance of the 
People upon the scene we must wait until a later 
day. The Social Compact on board the " Mayflower," 
and the similar agreement of the settlers of Rhode 
Island in 1637 — instruments in which English ex- 
iles bind themselves into a body politic — have been 
much insisted on as Constitutional beginnings. The 
men, however, are so few and their agreement 
couched in terms so brief and simple, that it is easy 
to overrate the significance of the documents. More 
important is the action of the three towns of Con- 
necticut, Hartford, Wethersfield, and Windsor, in 
1639. As Prof. Johnston has just made plain, 1 the 
emigration from Massachusetts Bay, led by Thomas 
Hooker, to the Connecticut Valley was a democratic 
secession, the partakers in which had no sooner es- 
tablished themselves than they formed a Constitution 
precisely in the modern fashion. The freemen came 
together in convention and formulated an elaborate 
code, by which the Legislature, when assembled, 
found its course narrowly prescribed. Undoubtedly 
it would be wrong to underestimate all this founda- . 
tion work, but when was the thing first done upon 
a national scale ? Here we have only little groups 
of pioneers, as yet on shipboard or living from hand 
to mouth in the forest, framing systems that will an- 
swer the simple needs of a handful of human beings. 

1 History of Connecticut, p. 63. 



440 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1656. 

The matter of Constitution-building on a great scale, 
for a populous country, with all its complicated ex- 
ternal and internal relations, was first undertaken by 
the men of the English Commonwealth. At the 
deserts in this field of these prime heroes, we may 
well at this time afford to take a glance. 

In the fall of 1647, we have seen that while the 
leaders hesitated, the rank and file of the Ironsides 
demanded that King and Lords should be laid aside ; 
that, each reputable man in the land casting his vote, 
representatives of the people should be chosen who 
should convene in a legislature ; that over this legis- 
lature nothing should have power but the People 
who elected it, and that there should be no limitation 
of this power except as regarded liberty of conscience 
— there, no man should undergo restraint. A year 
afterwards, at the time of the execution of the King, 
all this was carefully formulated. The leaders, civil 
and military, now stood with the men, and Henry 
Ireton prepared an " Agreement of the People " 
which was, in all substantial respects, a draft for an 
American Constitution. It never took effect be- 
cause, in spite of almost miraculous prowess, two- 
sevenths could not prevail over five-sevenths. A 
blind and perverse generation turned back to Stu- 
art rule, abandoning the achievement of popular gov- 
ernment to another time and another land. 1 But be- 
fore the nascent freedom was quite overswept, there 
came, in 1656, from one of those mighty strivers, an ex- 
position of the whole matter of Constitutional theory 

1 The " Instrument of Govern- in no way from the People, but 
ment " of the Protectorate came from a military Council. 



1656.] THE HEALING QUESTION. 44 1 

— the first ever made, and yet one to which succeed- 
ing ages have made little essential addition. It was 
the work of young Sir Henry Vane. Cromwell, long 
his bosom-friend and fellow-Republican, discouraged, 
had seen at last no way out of embarrassment but to 
make himself, through power of the sword, absolute. 
After he had thus ruled three years, opportunity 
came to Vane, disgraced and in retirement, to plead 
with him for an attempt at a different establishment. 

On the 14th of March, 1656, Cromwell, still ill at 
ease over the state of things, issued a declaration, 
calling upon the people to observe a general fast, in 
the hope that some better way might be revealed. As 
the call was phrased, the people were to apply them- 
selves " to the Lord to discover the Achan [Joshua 
vii] who had so long obstructed the settlement of 
these distracted kingdoms." Vane took occasion 
now to break the long silence which he had observed 
as to public matters, preparing "A Healing Question 
propounded and resolved upon Occasion of the late 
public and seasonable Call to Humiliation in order to 
Love and Union amongst the honest Party, and with 
a Desire to apply Balm to the Wound before it be- 
come incurable." Vane sent the " Healing Question " 
to Cromwell by Fleetwood, the latter's son-in-law, 
but when a month had passed the document was 
returned to him. Whether Cromwell had read it is 
uncertain, but Vane now caused it to be published. 

The Healing Question is filled from first to last 
with that spirit of freedom which we have already 
found, and which we shall continue to find in the 
declarations of Vane. It is also an overture toward 



442 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1656. 

reconciliation with Cromwell, the tone being ear- 
nestly, even affectionately respectful. During the 
three years of his government there had been " great 
silence in Heaven, as if God were pleased to stand 
still and be a looker-on to see what his people would 
make of it in England. And as God hath had the 
silent^part, so man, and that good men, too, have had 
the active and busy part, and have like themselves, 
made a great sound and noise like the shout of a 
King in a mighty host." He naturally finds fault 
with the course his old friend has pursued, and de- 
mands that the Parliamentary method shall be again 
restored. " That branch of sovereignty which chiefly 
respects the execution of the laws " he thinks may be 
" entrusted into the hands of one single person, if need 
require. . . . And all disobedience thereunto or con- 
tempt thereof, be taken as done to the people's sov- 
ereignty." He is apparently willing to have Crom- 
well remain at the head of affairs, but there must be 
a new arrangement for the government of England, 
which must no longer rest upon the mere will of the 
Army or its General ; and here he makes a recom- 
mendation which, if carefully weighed, must be re- 
garded as one of his best titles to great fame. He 
urges the calling of a convention for the drawing up 
of a Written Constitution, giving in clear terms what 
may be taken to be the first setting forth ever made 
of the Constitutional Idea, — the first setting forth, 
yet wanting little as to completeness. He recom- 
mends that " a restraint be laid upon the supreme 
power before it be erected, in the form of a funda- 
mental Constitution," and considers how this " funda- 
mental Constitution " shall be established as follows : 



1656.] THE HEALING QUESTION. 443 

" The most natural way for which would seem to 
be by a general council or convention of faithful, 
honest, and discerning men, chosen for that purpose 
by the free consent of the whole body, ... by order 
from the present ruling power, considered as general 
of the army. Which convention is not properly to 
exercise the legislative power, but only to debate 
freely and agree upon the particulars that, by way of 
fundamental constitutions, shall be laid and inviola- 
bly observed, as the conditions upon which the whole 
body so represented doth consent to cast itself into 
a civil and politic incorporation. . . . Which condi- 
tions so agreed . . . will be without danger of being 
broken or departed from, considering of what it is 
they are conditions, and the nature of the convention 
wherein they are made, which is of the People repre- 
sented in their highest state of sovereignty, as they 
have the sword in their hands unsubjected unto 
the rules of civil government, but what themselves, 
orderly assembled for that purpose, do think fit to 
make. And the sword upon these conditions sub- 
jecting itself to the supreme judicature thus to be 
set up, how suddenly might harmony, righteousness, 
love, peace, and safety unto the whole body follow 
hereupon, as the happy fruit of such a settlement, if 
the Lord have any delight to be amongst us ! " 

Under a Constitution so established Vane believes 
that Englishmen " may be well assured that light 
will spring up among them more and more unto the 
perfect day," — that the troubles of the land " will 
prove as shadows ready to flee away before the morn- 
ing brightness of Christ's heavenly appearance and 



444 



YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. 



[1656. 



second coming, to the bringing in that Kingdom of 
his that shall never be moved." 1 

The " Healing Question " is hard reading, as the 
prose of Milton is hard. Like the utterances of " the 
god-gifted organ voice of England," so the periods 
of Vane, often full of a certain long-drawn music, do 
not readily yield up their content to the somewhat 
decrepit comprehension of our less masculine age. 
Across the thought drift obscurities, dimly and sol- 
emnly luminous from fanatic heats that glowed deep 
within the soul of the Puritan enthusiast. A great 
idea, however, is clearly outlined — the presentment, 
perhaps, gaining impressiveness from the vague 
rhapsodizing by which it is here and there attended, 
as a peak, draped in vapor which is aglow from un- 
seen volcano fires, grows sublime. In the midst of 
such circumstances, for the first time in the history 
of the world, the Constitutional Idea finds exposition. 



1 It may be thought that no 
exposition of the Constitutional 
Idea can be called complete 
which contains no mention of a 
Supreme Court for the interpre- 
tation of the Constitution. But 
really cannot this be regarded as 
a necessary corollary from such a 
statement as Vane's ? De Tocque- 
ville and others have incorrectly 
regarded the idea of the Supreme 
Court as a brilliant American in- 
vention. " Much which is really 
English appears to De Tocque- 
ville to be American or Demo- 
cratic. The function of the 
judges, for instance, in expound- 
ing the Constitution, and disre- 



garding a statute which conflicts 
therewith, . . . seems to him to 
be a novel and brilliant invention, 
instead of a mere instance of a 
general doctrine of English law 
adapted to States partially subor- 
dinated to a Federal Government." 
(Bryce : Joh. Hop. Univ. Stud, in 
Histor. and Polit. Sci. 5th Series, 
No. ix. p. 26.) This function of 
the English Courts Vane, no doubt, * 
knew, and he may well have felt 
that his scheme presupposed, as a 
matter of course, that the judiciary 
should decide in doubtful cases. 
See also Brooks Adams : Atlantic 
Monthly, November, 1S84, "Em- 
bryo of a Commonwealth" at end. 



1656.] THE HEALING QUESTION. 445 

One wishes that Cromwell and Vane might have 
come together again. How fine is Carlyle's picture 
of Cromwell as he assumes the Protectorate, Decem- 
ber 16, 1653. "'His Highness was in a rich but 
plain 'suit ; black velvet, with cloak of the same: 
about his hat a broad band of gold.' Does the 
reader see him ? — a rather likely figure, I think. 
Stands some five feet ten or more ; a man of strong 
solid stature, and dignified, now partly military car- 
riage : the expression of him valor and devout intel- 
ligence, — energy and delicacy on a basis of simpli- 
city. Fifty-four years old, gone April last ; brown 
hair and moustache are getting grey. A figure of 
sufficient impressiveness ; — not lovely to the man- 
milliner species, nor pretending to be so. Massive 
stature ; big massive head, of somewhat leonine as- 
pect ; — wart above the right eye-brow ; nose of con- 
siderable blunt aquiline proportions ; strict yet copi- 
ous lips, full of all tremulous sensibilities, and also, 
if need were, of all fierceness and vigors ; deep lov- 
ing eyes, call them grave, call them stern, looking 
from under those craggy eye-brows as if in life- 
long sorrow, and yet not thinking it sorrow, think- 
ing it only labor and endeavor; on the whole, a 
right noble lion-face and hero-face, and to me royal 
enough." 

One can imagine for Vane a presence not less 
touching and dignified. He stood then in his best 
years, his fine features stamped with manly gravity, 
a shadow from the perils and labors of that long 
period of revolution, which only a soul of the most 
heroic mould could have borne. The abundant 



446 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1656. 

golden hair of his youth may well have grown gray 
and thin. What could one have seen in those steady 
brown black eyes ? a far-away look, as of one fond of 
losing himself in deep and intricate speculations ; — 
or the clear glance of a man of affairs, of the 'finest 
organizing faculty and keenest practical discrimina- 
tion ? There were strange contradictions in his char- 
acter: which of the two so different men that dwelt 
within him, must we suppose looked forth in the 
countenance ? 

So they stood, so long and in such peril the clos- 
est friends, now not far apart, and yearning we may 
believe for one another. Were they never again to 
be joined ? 

In the portraits of Cromwell and Vane by Hou- 
braken, fine specimens of that great engraver's skill, 
Oliver is given as Carlyle describes him, a face of 
tenderness and yet of power, a fit front for the 
Protector of a nation languishing and peril-begirt. 
Upon the countenance of Vane, too, sit a noble 
strength and dignity, — refinement also and a certain 
majesty, as if, man of the People though he had be- 
come, his high birth would still assert itself. In each 
case the old artist, somewhat quaintly, has set the 
figure in the midst of emblems, 1 pointing at the ca- 
reer in which he became illustrious : for Cromwell 
the sword and helmet ; for Vane an olive wreath that 
perhaps hints at peace, and the folds of a heavy 
sweeping curtain suggestive of the stately circum- 

1 In the frontispiece to this vol- ture, but it has been found neces- 
ume the face and figure of Vane sary to omit the adjuncts described 
are given after the Houbraken pic- in the text. 



[662.] THE HEALING QUESTION. 447 

stance of Parliaments and Councils. In each case, 
however, there lurks among the emblems a symbol 
ominously terrible — the axe of the headsman ! Its 
helve lies side by side with the sword of Oliver : it 
protrudes, half concealed by the falling drapery, be- 
neath the form of Vane. How solemn the commu- 
nity here brought to mind ! In their great striving 
through so many years they had been united as 
brothers: their hearts had beat in unison: in the 
judgment of each the same end had seemed desir- 
able, the same means expedient for securing it. A 
short estrangement, but in death the two men were 
to come together yet again. The head of Cromwell, 
struck off from his dead body, was to moulder upon 
a pole above the gable of Westminster Hall. Vane 
was to feel' the sharp edge while yet in fullest life. 
For each headless victim a grave of dishonor, — a 
name overwhelmed by the meanest contumely ! x 

1 Cromwell's latest biographer, "constitutional limit" upon the 

Mr. Frederic Harrison (Cromwell, " elected House." Since in his 

Macmillan, 1888) thinks that Crom- view the People alone were su- 

well and not Vane had "the fixed preme, he would, without doubt, 

idea of the founders of the United have said that they could, if they 

States of America," claiming for chose, make Executive and Legis- 

his hero that he alone recognized lative co-ordinate. He had no ob- 

the value of a Written Constitu- jection to a " Single Person," but 

tion, and that he believed in an he must derive his authority from 

Executive co-ordinate with, not the People — not from the Army, 

subordinate to, the Legislative not from himself. Vane, of course, 

power: whereas "the fixed idea of had no recognition of the expedi- 

Vane . . . was to establish the ency of the balance between the 

autocracy of an elected House, su- Executive, the Legislative, and the 

preme over the Executive, and free Judiciary : that came in with Mon- 

from any constitutional limit, just tesquieu,* a century afterwards, 

as we see it [in England] to-day." from whom our constitution-mak- 

(p. 196.) No reader of the Heal- ers learned it. But so far as Vane's 

ing Question can believe that Vane thought went it was soundly Amer- 

failed to recognize the value of a ican. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

Richard's parliament. 

Thurloe writes to Henry Cromwell, June 16 : 
" We are yet very much troubled with the Fifth 
Monarchy men and the Levellers, who have their 
constant meeting to put us into blood. By the Lev- 
ellers I mean those who pretend to a republique or 
popular form of government. Sir H. Vane hath 
lately put forth a new form of government plainly 
laying aside thereby that which now is. . . . At the 
first coming out of it it was applauded, but now upon 
second thoughts it is rejected as being impracticable, 
and arguing in truth at setting up the Long Parlia- 
ment again. But all men judge that he hath some 
very good hopes, that he showes so much courage. 
His name is not to it but he doth acknowledge it to 
be his. It is certain it doth behove us to have a 
watchful eye upon that interest." 1 

Vane was summoned before the Council by a 
curt writ. He at once went to London, and from 
his house at Charing Cross, August 20, wrote a 
manly letter 2 denying their authority to compel him 
to appear, but expressing his willingness to do so. 
On the 21st he was under examination, where, says 

1 Thurloe, v. 122. 2 Ibid. v. 328. 



1656.] RICHARD'S PARLIAMENT. 449 

Thurloe to Henry Cromwell, 1 " he owned the writ- 
ing of it [The Healing Question] but in termes darke 
and misterious enough, as his manner is." He was 
laid under bonds of £5000 to do nothing against the 
Protector's government. To this he declined to 
submit, declaring that the " Healing Question," 
which they call seditious, " asserts the principles, 
spirit, and justice of the cause we have professed and 
fought for in our late Warre . . . nor can I but ob- 
serve how exactly those that have made this order do 
tread in the steps of the late King." 

Writs for a new Parliament had been issued July 
10, and Vane had tried in three places to be elected 
for it. 2 Whalley and Lilburne, Major-Generals in 
the North, watched him narrowly, reporting to the 
centre what they discovered. 3 " If anything inable 
him to be chosen," wrote the former, " I fear it will be 
his being at this juncture of time sent for." Instead 
of a seat in Parliament, Vane's fate was to fall into 
prison. September 9th he was committed to Caris- 
brook Castle, the governor being charged to let no 
one speak to him except in presence of an officer. 
In receiving Oliver's condemnation he was in good 
company ; — Harrison, Bradshaw, Ludlow, Lawson, 
the soldiers Rich, Okey, Alured, and others who had 
done manful work in the Honest Party, were dealt 
with at the same time. In the circumstances it can- 
not be said Vane's treatment was severe. No plots 
that beset the Protector were more dangerous than 
those of Republicans, and who could say how much 
aid and comfort the " Healing Question " might 

1 Thurloe, v. 349. 2 Ibid. v. 349. 8 Ibid. v. 296, 299. 



450 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1656. 

afford those who engineered them ! It was read and 
pondered widely. 

Vane signalized his arrival at Carisbrook by an 
outspoken warning to Cromwell, of which the follow- 
ing strong sentences are a portion : — 

" My Lord : Having something in my mind to 
speak by way of more peculiar address and concern- 
ment to your Lordship than the rest of your com- 
pany, I have chosen to do it by these lines, as the 
testimony which upon this occasion, I desire to 
speak before your own conscience in the sight of 
God. ... I am as little satisfied with your active, 
and ^^establishing principles, in the lively colours 
wherein daily they show themselves, as you are or 
can be with my passive ones, and am willing in this 
to joyn issue with you, and to beg of the Lord to 
judge between us and to give the decision according 
to truth and righteousness. 

" And having named truth and righteousness, surely 
it may but too truly be said, that amongst us remains 
nothing but the name, the power and life thereof 
seems to be ceased from our land, and is banished 
from the societies of most men. Yet, my Lord, it is 
that whereby the actions and practice of all men are 
to be ruled, as well of Governours as of the governed. 
Governours themselves are neither to be nor make 
themselves more than what in truth and righteous- 
ness they are and ought to be. . . . That which in 
truth of fact you were is visible enough to every 
eye, that is to say, under the Legislative Author- 
ity of the People Represented in Parliament, duly 
chosen and rightly constituted : You and the force 



1656.] RICHARD'S PARLIAMENT. 45 1 

under your command are the nation's strength and 
formed military power, kept up by a derived authority 
from them, at a settled pay to be imployed for the Na- 
tion's use and service and theirs only ; and over this 
military body you are by them placed as the head. 

" This then is the power which duly and properly 
you are, and more than this, I am not satisfied in my 
conscience, is in truth and righteousness appertain- 
ing unto you ; to use this power lawfully, is your 
honour, your duty, your safety, as well as their wel- 
fare, and preservation, for whom it was raised and is 
still paid. To use this unlawfully, as evidently you 
doe, is to become like that one sinner, which (Eccles. 
9. 19,) is said to destroy much good. 

" And although your own conscience cannot but 
consent to the truth of what is here told you, in the 
name and fear of the Lord, yet being strong and 
trusting to the power of your sword, which is flesh 
and not spirit, is man and not God, your heart is lifted 
up, if you speedily repent not, unto your destruction. 
. . . In reference as well to Christ, your heavenly 
head, as to the good people of this nation in Parlia- 
ment assembled, and rightly constituted who were, 
and ought to be your earthly head ; you lift up your 
heel, and harden yourself every day more than other, 
in a fixed resolution not to become subject, as is your 
duty, nor to hold and keep yourself in your due sta- 
tion allotted to you in the body ; but are arguing at 
the throne in spirituals as well as temporals ; and to 
set up yourself in a capacity of not holding your 
head either in the one consideration or the other. 
. . . Take then in good part before it be too late, 



452 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1656. 

this faithful warning and following advice of an an- 
cient friend, but is now thought fit to be used and 
dealt with as an enemy." l 

Vane was released December 31st, after an impris- 
onment of four months. No traditions of him linger 
at Carisbrook. The fine old castle rises in the centre 
of the Isle of Wight more beautiful, no doubt, in its 
ruin than ever in its strength. Through all the 
epochs of English history it has been a stronghold. 
The barrows of the Britons rise by the side of the 
later walls, and the spade uncovers Roman tessel- 
lated pavements in the immediate neighborhood. 
The yellow ruins are hung thick with ivy, and within, 
staircase and floor so far remain that one can go 
from room to room, getting hints from the wide 
chimneys, the deep window-seats, the utensils and 
carving, how life has gone on there in former days. 
The memory of Charles I it is that beyond every- 
thing haunts the pile. On that beautiful lawn he 
played at bowls ; here on the parapet, looking off 
over the pleasant fields of Wight which even the 
winter can scarcely rob of greenness, he disputed 
in his grave kingly way with ministers and politi- 
cians ; in this room he wove treacherous plots ; 
through this grated window he tried to escape. That 
Vane moved in these same spots is forgotten ; and 
yet to the English-speaking world of to-day how 
vastly more significant his figure ! Imprisoned for 
the " Healing Question," a demand for perfect tolera- 

1 This letter is bound up with Question, preserved in the British 
an ancient copy of the Healing Museum. 



i657-] RICHARD'S PARLIAMENT. 453 

tion, for complete popular sovereignty, for a shaking 
off of old shackles, — an anticipation of the best 
political thought of to-day, a foregleam of all that is 
finest in the American polity ! How masterful he 
was in ways of which the King knew nothing ! If 
impracticable, what a prophet of a great time to 
come.! 

Henceforth, through what remained of Cromwell's 
life, there was a thorough break of friendly relations. 
The Protector no doubt thought Vane incorrigible, 
while Vane, who after a while was allowed to live as 
a recluse at Raby, believed his old friend selfishly 
ambitious, and beyond hope of conversion. Ludlow 
declares x that Vane became the subject of a petty per- 
secution, his title to certain " forest walks " near Raby 
being disputed, while he was privately informed that 
all proceedings should cease if he would only comply. 
Ludlow is an honest witness, but we cannot call him 
unprejudiced. He was in the same boat with Vane, 
in no mood to do justice to Oliver. If the story were 
true, it would reflect little credit upon either the Pro- 
tector's sagacity or magnanimity, and few men have 
ever surpassed him in either. 

We find Vane writing in his quiet a letter to Har- 
rington, whose " Oceana " was in those days a famous 
book, " A Needful Correction or Balance in Popular 
Government." Also a theological work, " Of the 
Love of God and Communion with God," containing 
overmuch of the obscurity which always, in his writ- 
ings of this kind, causes the despair of a modern 
reader. Meantime the great Oliver went forward, 

1 II. 594- 



454 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1657. 

prayerful, sincere, heroic, beneath his vast burden so 
splendid and yet so onerous. He had tried re- 
peatedly to surrender the nation into the hands of its 
own representatives sitting in Parliament, reserving 
to himself, however, authority to step in, if need were, 
and guide the land, with fatherly purpose, through 
the perils that encompassed it : in his devout Puritan 
soul he felt that the Lord had made him his instru- 
ment, and that the people should recognize the fact. 
Each time, however, there had been a questioning of 
matters which he thought should not be touched, and 
so each time, at the autocratic word, St. Stephen's 
had emptied itself, leaving all to the Protector's 
sword. The title of King had been put aside, but a 
rule more absolute than that of any English King 
prevailed, — no more arbitrary, however, than it was 
beneficent; and under the influence of blended 
power and gentleness, sullen Cavalier and Presbyte- 
rian, uncompromising Quaker also, and outrageous 
Leveller, were gradually sinking into acquiescence. 
Looking abroad, to what quarter of the civilized 
world did not the arm of Oliver extend, as potent to 
beckon into life all things great and good, as it was 
to dash into ruin all things that made for ill ! Who 
that follows that wonderful career, that reads those 
letters and speeches, stammering, incoherent, but so 
charged with all manly worth, will abate a word from 
Milton's great panegyric ? x 

" He was a soldier disciplined to perfection in a 
knowledge of himself. He had either extinguished, 
or by habit had learned to subdue, the whole host of 

1 Defensio Secunda pro Populo Anglicano; translation. 



I6S7-] RICHARD'S PARLIAMENT. 455 

vain hopes, fears, and passions which infest the soul. 
He first acquired the government of himself ... so 
that on the first day he took the field against the 
external enemy, he was a veteran in arms. . . . The 
whole surface of the British empire has been the 
theatre of his triumphs. The good and the brave 
were from all quarters attracted to his camp, not only 
as to the best school of military talents, but of piety 
and virtue. His soldiers were a stay to the good, a 
terror to the evil, and the warmest advocates for 
every exertion of piety and virtue. While you, O 
Cromwell, are left among us, he hardly shows a 
proper confidence in the Supreme, who distrusts the 
security of England. We all willingly yield the palm 
of sovereignty to your unrivalled ability and virtue 
except the few among us who do not know that noth- 
ing in the world is more pleasing to God, than that 
the supreme power should be vested in the best and 
the wisest of men. Such, O Cromwell, all acknowl- 
edge you to be ; such are the services which you 
have rendered as the leader of our councils, the gen- 
eral of our armies, and the father of your country. 
Continue your course with the same unrivalled mag- 
nanimity : it sits well upon you. To you our coun- 
try owes its liberties, nor can you sustain a character 
at once more momentous and more august than that 
of the author, the guardian, and the preserver of our 
liberties. Hence you have not only eclipsed the 
achievements of all our kings, but even those which 
have been fabled of our heroes." 

Vane could not have joined in such praise ; and to 
Milton, in these days, Vane had become one of those 



45 ^ YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1658. 

" who are either ambitious of honours which they 
have not the capacity to sustain, or who envy those 
which are conferred on one more worthy than them- 
selves, or else who do not know that nothing in the 
world is more pleasing to God than that the supreme 
power should be vested in the best and wisest of 
men." Great hearts were they all, long together, now 
severed, the little rift of alienation becoming gradu- 
ally a wide chasm : partly it was misunderstanding of 
one another's thought, partly a real difference of view. 
The time had come for a change. Cromwell, in 
the summer of 1658, watched, broken-hearted, by the 
deathbed of his favorite daughter, Lady Claypole, 
at Hampton Court. He followed her to her grave 
in Henry Vllths chapel at Westminster, then sank 
himself. He was seen once more among his troopers. 
" Before I came to him," writes the Ouaker, George 
Fox, " as he rode at the head of his life-guard, I saw 
and felt a waft of death go forth against him ; and 
when I came to him, he looked like a dead man." A 
few days more and the great, simple, devout soul 
muttered from his couch his dying prayer : 1 " Lord, 
though I am a miserable and wretched creature, I 
am in covenant with thee through grace, and I may, 
I will, come to thee. For thy people thou hast made 
me, though very unworthy, a mean instrument to do 
them some good, and thee service; and many of 
them have set too high a value upon me, though 
many wish and would be glad of my death. But, 
Lord, however thou dost dispose of me, continue and 
go on to do good to them. Give them consistency 

1 Carlyle, ii. 409. 



1658.] RICHARD'S PARLIAMENT. 457 

of judgment, one heart, and mutual love ; and go on 
to deliver them, and with the work of reformation ; 
and make the name of Christ glorious in the world. 
Teach those who look too much on thy instruments 
to depend more upon thyself ; pardon such as desire 
to trample on the dust of a poor worm, for they are 
thy people, too ; and pardon the folly of this short 
prayer, even for Jesus Christ's sake ; and give us a 
good night, if it be thy pleasure." The Lord gave 
the great, sweet soul its good night September 3d, 
the day of Dunbar and Worcester. 

The death of Oliver was the signal for the return 
of Vane to public life, though the opportunity did 
not come at once. Richard Cromwell, who in some 
indistinct way was believed to have been nominated 
by his father on his deathbed, succeeded to the Pro- 
tectorate, and for five months the state ran smoothly 
under the impetus given it by the great hand that 
was now mouldering. Among the adherents of the 
dead Oliver, however, factions soon began to form 
destined to develop ere long a perilous discord. 
There was a dynastic party, the Cromwellians, who 
cordially recognized Richard as his father's successor, 
and sought to retain him in all the power which his 
father had possessed. Another company, however, 
composed for the most part of Army officers, desired 
a diminution of the Protector's power. They wished 
to have Fleetwood, Cromwell's son-in-law, com- 
mander-in-chief, and in a measure co-equal with 
Richard in the administration. The meeting-place 
of this knot of men was Wallingford House close by 



45 8 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1659. 

Whitehall, the residence of Fleetwood, whence they 
came to bear the name of the Wallingford-House 
party. At length writs were issued for a Parliament, 
and here a remarkable retrogression was to be no- 
ticed. Whereas the two Parliaments of Oliver's Pro- 
tectorate (the Barebones Parliament, as made up of 
mere nominees of Oliver, does not merit the name) 
had been electedaccording to the reformed plan, pro- 
posed originally by Ireton in the "Agreement of the 
People," and supposed to have been a feature of the 
act which Oliver had caught into his own hands at 
the Dissolution of the Rump, there was a return now 
to the old methods. The disfranchised boroughs 
received their old privileges, the new distribution of 
members was forsaken. All reverted to the ancient 
time-honored way. It was done at the instance of 
the lawyers, and the nation received it without re- 
monstrance. 

This Parliament assembled on the 27th of January, 
1659, Westminster overflowing with legislators as it 
had not done since the time of the assembling of the 
Long Parliament. There was an Upper House, con- 
stituted of Richard's Council and the Lords whom 
Oliver had made : here, probably, the Cromwellians 
and the Wallingford-House party had not far from 
equal weight. Five hundred and fifty-eight members 
formed the Lower House, of whom twenty-five sat for 
Wales, thirty for Ireland, and twenty-one for Scot- 
land. The Irish and Scotch members were almost 
to a man government nominees. Of the English 
members some fifty were pure Republicans, and we 
find the old leaders among these, who had either been 



I659-] RICHARD'S PARLIAMENT. 459 

in retirement since the coup d'etat of 1653, or had 
figured in Oliver's time in opposition more or less 
definite to his autocracy. Bradshaw, Scott, Haselrig, 
Ludlow, and others, were there, and among these sat 
once more Sir Henry Vane. He had been elected 
not without difficulty. Though fairly returned, it is 
said, by his old constituency of Kingston-upon-Hull, 
the choice was thrown out. He tried at Bristol with 
similar ill fortune, succeeding only after a third at- 
tempt, at Whitchurch in Hampshire. The large body 
of Cromwellians was led by Thurloe, a man bold 
and adroit, while the most conspicuous representa- 
tive of Wallingford-House was John Lambert, now 
and henceforth a character much in the foreground. 
Although but just forty years old, he had been con- 
spicuous since Marston Moor, where the raw recruits 
whom he commanded refused to stand before the 
charge of Goring. Of Oliver's pupils and lieuten- 
ants none had had a more brilliant record in the 
field. At Preston he was Cromwell's right arm, and 
many believed that he saved his master at Dunbar. 
Like Ireton he was bred a lawyer, and though with- 
out Ireton's weight of intellect and character, he was 
brilliant and versatile, and sometimes displayed a 
most attractive magnanimity. He once allowed six 
captive soldiers condemned to death to cut their way 
through his guard and escape. 1 The idea of the Pro- 
tectorate is said to have been due to him. He was a 
prominent figure at Oliver's installation and stood al- 
ways at his right hand. He never would submit that 
the Parliament should be over the Army. His wife, 

1 Ranke, iii. 261. 



460 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1659. 

a lady of good family, was an ardent Vaneist, as the 
religious followers of Sir Henry were called. A mar- 
riage had been proposed between his daughter and 
the young Duke of York, afterwards James II. Soon 
after this time we find a match talked of between 
a daughter of Lambert and a son of Vane, still an- 
other Henry, who died before reaching maturity. — 
Besides Cromwellians, Republicans, and Wallingford- 
House adherents, there sat in Parliament a consider- 
able number who, as all felt, were secretly Stuartists. 
Making allowance for partisan bias, we may be- 
lieve here the report of Clarendon, who says that this 
Parliament was governed by Vane and Haselrig, 
" the heads of the republic party, though of very dif- 
ferent natures and understandings. . . . Vane, who 
was much the wisest man, found he could never 
make that assembly settle such a government as he 
affected either in church or state : and Haselrig, who 
was of a rude and stubborn nature and of a weak 
understanding, concurred with him in all the fierce 
counsels which might more irrecoverably disinherit 
the King and root out his majesty's party : in all 
other things relating to the temporal or ecclesiastical 
matters, they were not only of different judgments, 
but of extraordinary animosity against each other." 1 
Haselrig " believed the Parliament to be the only 
government that would infallibly keep out King and 
Bishop, and his credit in the House was greater than 
the other's ; which made Vane less troubled at the 
violence that was used, (though he would never ad- 
vise it) and appear willing enough to confer and 

1 p. 2954 etc. 



1659] RICHARD'S PARLIAMENT. 46 1 

join with those who would find any other hinge to 
hang the government upon : so he presently entered 
into conversation with those of the Army, who were 
most like to have authority." 

In " Burton's Diary," 1 we have the means of fol- 
lowing, in something like the minuteness of modern 
reporting, the speeches and actions of Richard's Par- 
liament. Vane's first great speech was given on the 
9th of February upon the matter whether the Pro- 
tectorate existed of " undoubted right," based as it 
was upon the " Petition and Advice," an instrument 
devised in Oliver's latter days as a foundation for 
his power. Here are significant passages from this 
speech : " Consider what it is we are upon — a Pro- 
tector in the office of chief magistrate. But the of- 
fice of right is in yourselves. . . . You may have the 
honor of giving or not giving, as best likes you. . . . 
Give not by wholesale, so as to beg again at retail. 
. . . Look well about you that it slip not from you 
without considering what is your right and the right 
of the People. ... I observe a variety of opinions as 
to what our state of government is. Some conceive 
that it is in King, Lords, and Commons ; that the 
principles of old foundations yet remain entire, so 
that all our evils, indeed, are imputed to our depart- 
ure from thence. It hath pleased God, by well- 
known steps to put a period and to bring that gov- 
ernment to a dissolution." 

Vane declares his adherence, in the earlier time, to 
the time-honored form, and shows how he and his 
friends forsook it unwillingly, because they were 

1 Edited by John Towill Rutt. 



462 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1659. 

forced to take new ground. " There was then a 
declaration drawn in favor of it. I was one of that 
committee. [The allusion is to the Heads of Pro- 
posals of 1647.] x . . . But this encouraged the King, 
and brought it to that issue at last that he hardened 
his heart till it was resolved to make no more ad- 
dresses, but to bring him to judgment. But in the 
mean time applications were made to him, imploring 
him to be reconciled ; and nothing was wanting in 
the House, that, if possible, he might have saved the 
government and himself with it ; but God would not 
have it so. . . . This House . . . were reduced to 
the necessity of doing that which is now the founda- 
tion of that building upon which you must stand. 
... It was declared by them that the taking away 
of the Kingship was the only happy way of returning 
to their own freedom. Their meaning thereby was, 
that the original of all just power was in the People, 
and was reserved wholly to them, the representatives. 
... I confess I was then exceedingly to seek, in the 
clearness of my judgment, as to the trial of the 
King. I was for six weeks absent from my seat here, 
out of my tenderness of blood ; yet, all power being 
thus in the People originally, I myself was afterward 
in the business. ... It was then necessary, as the 
first act, to have resort to the foundation of all just 
power, and to create and establish a free state, to 
bring the People out of bondage from all pretence of 
superiority over them. It seemed plain to me that 
all offices had their rise from the People and that all 
should be accountable to them." 

1 See pp. 270, 271. 



I659-] RICHARD'S PARLIAMENT. 463 

Thus explaining his own position, showing how 
gradually he had grown into his Republicanism, 
Vane now shows how fixed he had become in that 
faith, and how determined he was in opposition to 
any other sovereignty than that of the People. This 
Petition and Advice upon which Richard's authority 
was to be based, came not from the People, but from 
Oliver and his Council. " It is said," cried Vane, 
" the foundations are laid upon which we may build 
a superstructure of which we need not be ashamed. 
Now, shall we be underbuilders to supreme Stuart ? 
We have no need, no obligation upon us to return to 
that old government." In other words, to allow ar- 
bitrary power was only paving the way for a restora- 
tion of Charles II. " Lastly, at the dissolution of the 
Long Parliament, you lost your possession, not your 
right. The chief magistrate's place was assumed 
without a law. . . . This Petition and Advice was 
. . . only a pair of stairs to ascend the throne ; a step 
to King, Lords, and Commons. . . . You are in the 
clear, rightful possession of this government, which 
cannot be disposed of but by your consent." 

Vane's party were beaten. Richard was admitted 
to a power based upon the Petition and Advice, and 
Vane now sought to limit the Protector's unconstitu- 
tional authority as much as he could. February 17, 
he declared, among other things, that the Protector 
should be denied " the negative voice," the veto 
power. " I would have him possess all things need- 
ful to his acting for the People . . . but not power 
to do them or you any hurt. ... It is therefore ne- 
cessary so to bind him as he may grow up with the 



464 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1659. 

public interest. . . . Pronounce your judgment, that 
the chief magistrate shall have no negative upon the 
People assembled in Parliament. Do this, else I 
shall take it for granted that you will have no fruit 
of your debate, and that you intend nothing for the 
People." February 21, the matter under debate be- 
ing military proceedings, Vane's speech contains such 
sentences as this : " I see this affair all along man- 
aged but to support the interest of a single person, 
and not for the public good, for the People's inter- 
est." A few days later, in debates concerning the 
Upper House, which, it was urged, ought to stand 
also by the Petition and Advice, Vane's outbursts 
are full of eloquence and grandeur. " I understand 
not that objection that we are sinew-shrunk and 
manacled, and cannot proceed ; that we can effect 
nothing unless we transact with these men. . . . 
When the power of King or Lords is melted down 
into this House, it is in the People by the law of na- 
ture and reason. Death and tract of time may melt 
it and bring it down, but this shall never die. Where 
is then the anarchy, the sneaking oligarchy? The 
representative body never dies, whoever die. . . . 
You set up a means to perpetuate an arbitrary power 
over you, to lay yourselves aside and make you for- 
ever useless — I may say odious forever ! . . . God 
is almighty. Will you not trust him with the conse- 
quences ? He that has unsettled a monarchy of so 
many descents in peaceable times, and brought you 
to the top of your liberties, though he drive you back 
for a while into the wilderness, he will bring you 
back. He is a wiser workman than to reject his own 
work." 



1 659.] RICHARD'S PARLIAMENT. 465 

The effect of this speech was very great, nearly 
turning the scale against the Upper House, which is 
said to have been saved by the votes of the govern- 
ment nominees, the Scotch and Irish members. 
Against these, on March 9th, Vane impetuously 
turned. He told the House it was no House and 
" had been out of order ever since they sat," be- 
cause it contained members who were merely govern- 
ment nominees and not duly elected. " A greater 
imposition never was by a single person upon a Par- 
liament, to put sixty votes upon you." On March 
23d, the case of the borough of Dartmouth being be- 
fore the House, whether the right to elect a member 
belonged to the people of the borough or to the cor- 
poration, Vane moved to assert the right of the peo- 
ple. " A fundamental right of the People cannot be 
taken out by any charter or corporation whatsoever." 
When at last the little knot of Republicans were 
quite overborne, Vane's terse, vehement denuncia- 
tions rung again and again over the tumult of debate. 
" In every step you have taken, you give away all. 
Do something that may make you appear trustees in- 
deed ; and not in one moment give away all you have 
fought for." April 5th, " Vane spoke very high as 
usual. ' You give away all at once, and may go home 
and say we have done for the single person's and 
others' turn, and nothing for the People.' " Vane is 
constantly on his feet, always the People's champion, 
always clear and forceful — frequently eloquent and 
most vehement, his outpourings presenting a strange 
contrast indeed to the cloudy sermonizing to which 
he sometimes saw fit to surrender himself. His most 



466 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1659. 

memorable utterance in this Parliament seems to 
have been just at its close. The speech as we have 
it * has been modernized, but the power remains in 
it. It was given while the House was refusing to 
obey the Protector's summons to meet him in the 
House of Lords, the usher of the Black Rod press- 
ing meantime vainly for admittance. 

" Mr. Speaker: Among all the people of the uni- 
verse, I know none who have shown so much zeal 
for the liberty of their country as the English at this 
time have done: they have, by the help of Divine 
Providence, overcome all obstacles, and have made 
themselves free. We have driven away the heredi- 
tary tyranny of the house of Stuart at the expense 
of much blood and treasure, in hopes of enjoying 
hereditary liberty, after having shaken off the yoke 
of kingship ; and there is not a man among us who 
could have imagined that any person would be so 
bold as to dare to attempt the ravishing from us that 
freedom, which cost us so much blood and so much 
labor. But so it happens, I know not by what mis- 
fortune, we are fallen into the error of those who 
poisoned the emperor Titus to make room for Domi- 
tian, who made away Augustus that they might have 
Tiberius, and changed Claudius for Nero. I am 
sensible these examples are foreign from my subject, 
since the Romans in those days were buried in lewd- 
ness and luxury, whereas the People of England are 
now renowned all over the world for their great vir- 
tue and discipline, and yet suffer an idiot without 
courage, without sense, nay, without ambition, to have 

1 Biograpliia Britannica, art. "Vane." 



I6S9-] RICHARD'S PARLIAMENT. 467 

dominion in a country of liberty ! One could bear a 
little with Oliver Cromwell, though contrary to his 
oath of fidelity to the Parliament, contrary to his duty 
to the public, contrary to the respect he owed that 
venerable body from whom he received his authority, 
he usurped the government. His merit was so ex- 
traordinary, that our judgments, our passions, might 
be blinded by it. He made his way to empire by the 
most illustrious actions ; he had under his command 
an Army that had made him a conqueror, and a 
People that had made him their General. But as for 
Richard Cromwell his son, who is he ? What are 
his titles ? We have seen that he has his sword by 
his side; but did he ever draw it? And what is of 
more importance in this case, is he fit to get obedi- 
ence from a mighty nation, who could never make a 
footman obey him ? Yet we must recognize this 
man as our King, under the style of Protector ! a 
man without birth, without courage, without conduct. 
For my part, I declare, Sir, it shall never be said that 
I made such a man my master." 

Before dismissing Richard's Parliament, we must 
glance at the figure of headstrong, well-meaning 
Haselrig, the schoolmate of Vane so long before at 
Westminster, his helper during all the terrible years, 
in these days his close associate and fellow-champion 
in the fight for the cause of the People. Though a 
stout soldier, he, unlike Lambert and many of the 
Army men, felt that Parliament ought to be supreme, 
carrying his ideas to a point, that, as we shall pres- 
ently see, separated him even from Vane. His vig- 



468 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1659. 

orous manner made him now, as Clarendon hints in 
a passage already quoted, more influential even than 
Vane, who, perhaps, at this time fell under the sus- 
picion of being too much given to impracticable 
dreams. Says " Burton's Diary," under head of 
March 21: "It happened in the Council Chamber 
that some hot words passed from a member to Sir 
Arthur Haselrig. He told him [Sir Arthur] that all 
the laws made in the fa°:-end of the Lono- Parliament 
were not of force, and spoke very reproachfully of 
that Parliament ; and told Sir Arthur that it was he 
that endeavored to make himself and Sir Henry 
Vane the great Hogen Mogens, to rule the Common- 
wealth. The member that ruffled Sir Arthur was of 
no great quality. He [Sir Arthur] took it heavily 
out, and wished he had been hanged up, and three or 
four more, and their posterity rooted up, rather than 
have acted so highly, and now come thus to be re- 
proached. The great things of taking away king- 
ship, House of Lords, war with Scotland, Ireland, 
and Holland, and public sales were all in that time." 
In this passage we get a glimpse of the manner of the 
testy veteran : his coat of mail was laid aside, to be 
sure, but he flared up into as great wrath among the 
benches as if he were at the head of a troop, with 
Cavaliers to confront. 

Finer, however, than Haselrig is the figure of that 
other schoolmate of Vane, Scott, like Haselrig a 
soldier right from the field, 1 a man far better re- 
strained, who could speak in the noblest fashion, and 
had a soul perfectly undaunted. We have more than 

1 Lives of the Regicides, article " Scott." 



I659-] RICHARD'S PARLIAMENT. 469 

once had example of his ability of speech : we shall 
hear him again under circumstances that show well 
his power and courage. 

Vane's public career is now close upon its end. 
After a few troubled months, England was destined 
to seek refuge from anarchy by rushing back to the 
old order; but as yet the Republicans were not hope- 
less, and no heart was firmer than that of Vane. In 
Parliament, all went against them. Richard and the 
Other House were recognized, their title being some- 
thing different from the will of the People. The 
right of Government nominees, of the Irish and 
Scottish members, namely, to sit among the repre- 
sentatives of the People, was accorded, and a tolera- 
tion favored quite too narrow to' suit men who saw in 
Voluntaryism the only proper ecclesiastical arrange- 
ment. The Wallingford- House Party, however, that 
powerful Army faction, was also dissatisfied with Par- 
liament, and at length a combination of the Repub- 
licans with Wallingford House brought Richard's 
Parliament to an end. In April all was in confusion. 
Fleetwood, Oliver's son-in-law, and Desborough, Oli- 
ver's brother-in-law, led the Army men, the latter tell- 
ing his nephew Richard, that if he would dissolve 
Parliament the officers would take care of him; if he 
refused, they would do it without him, and let him 
shift for himself. Richard yielded on the 21st, and 
Parliament was dissolved. The matter of adminis- 
tration without a Parliament could perhaps have 
been managed, but there was great need of money 
for public uses, and how could that be raised except 
in the time-honored way? Vane and the Republi- 



470 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1659. 

cans pressed that the old Rump should be restored. 
The "Single Person" and the " Other House," they 
could not abide ; but in the strait what expedient could 
be better than the temporary revival of that purged 
Long Parliament, stamped out by Cromwell, but 
never legally dissolved ? Wallingford House hesi- 
tated, and there was much discussion. Vane's house 
at Charing Cross was a meeting-place where Repub- 
licans and Army men sought to agree. The " Good 
old Cause " was a cry that now filled the air, the 
people shouting for a return to those days of the 
Commonwealth, before the autocracy had begun, and 
at length the Republicans prevailed. One hundred 
and sixty members were found to be still living of the 
Long Parliament as it stood from 1648 to 1653. 
May 7, forty-two of these were got together, and 
Lenthall, after difficulties which Ludlow 1 relates 
amusingly, was prevailed upon to take his old place 
as Speaker. Henry Marten, who had been in jail for 
debt, was brought in in triumph, and St. Stephen's 
Hall became once more the home of a Parliament. 
There was difficulty at once as to whether members 
secluded by Pride's Purge should have a place. At 
the outset of things indomitable Prynne put in an 
appearance, and we have mention in the tracts, 2 of 
what probably was an earnest scene. Haselrig meet- 
ing Prynne stormed at him as having no right there, 
and Sir Henry Vane said: " Mr. Prynne, what make 
vou here ? You ouorht not to come into this House, 
being formerly voted out. I wish you as a friend 

1 II. p. 649. Faithful Scout, June 10-17, 1659. 

2 Weekly Post, June 7-14, 1659. Thomasson Tracts, 985. 



1659] RICHARD'S PARLIAMENT. 47 1 

quietly to depart hence ; else some course will be 
presently taken with you for your presumption." 
Difficulties were, however, overcome ; all but genu- 
ine Rumpers were excluded, and the body set to 
work " to endeavor the settlement of the Common- 
wealth, without a Single Person, 1 Kingship, or House 
of Peers." After discussion with the Army men, a 
Council was at length settled upon to be the execu- 
tive body, to consist of thirty-one members, of whom 
ten were to be taken from outside of Parliament. 
Vane now accepted the command of a regiment, and 
became one of a committee of seven to nominate, for 
approval by Parliament, officers to be commissioned. 
Fleetwood became Lieutenant General for England 
and Scotland. May 25th, came Richard's formal 
abdication. The army demanded good treatment for 
him and the family of Cromwell in general. Hand- 
some sums of money were bestowed upon Richard 
and his mother, " as a mark of the high esteem this 
nation hath of the good service done by our ever 
renowned General." Richard lived fifty-three years 
longer, an amiable, inoffensive man, who was quite 
able to fill respectably a private station. It was his 
misfortune to be forced by circumstances to appear 
in an exalted place for which he had no fitness. 
" Tumble-down-Dick " was his nickname in his time, 
and history has only contemptuous mention of him. 

In time the restored Rump amounted to one hun- 
dred and twenty-two in number, though never more 
than seventy-six were present. In the Council, Vane 

1 By the Single Person the Re- cratic Protector, not a limited Ex- 
publicans now understood an auto- ecutive. 



472 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1659. 

was of course a leading figure, standing at once, in- 
deed, in the same prominence which he had occupied 
in the days when Blake fought Van Tromp. Really 
it was a most false position which the Republicans 
now occupied, and one can imagine with what des- 
peration their souls must have been filled. Sover- 
eignty Of the People without privileged class or Es- 
tablished Church was their principle, but the People 
themselves were determined not to be sovereign. 
Richard's Parliament just dissolved, though it had the 
few government nominees, was in vast majority fairly 
representative of the England of that day, and it had 
declared for an autocratic Protector, a House of 
Lords, and a very narrow Toleration. The few Re- 
publicans were trying, as it were, to save the People 
from themselves. With an inconsistency that almost 
raises a smile, although the case is so pathetic, they 
had sought the arbitrary backing of the Army to 
force freedom on a People that did not desire to be 
free. In what sense did the Rump represent the 
England of 1659? Vane had been elected to the 
Long Parliament in 1640, and sat in the Rump by 
virtue of that election : his colleagues had all been 
sent by the constituencies of a time long before. 
Holding it, as they did, for their deepest theoretical 
tenet that there was no legitimate power in the land 
but the will of the People, how could they feel them- 
selves authorized to thwart that will, which chose to 
be restrained by masters rather than to be free ? 

The world was not ready for their ideas ; there 
was nothing to be done but at once to give up striv- 
ing. Still, they did not give up as yet, and civil war 



I659-] RICHARD'S PARLIAMENT. 473 

was confidently expected between the Protectoratists 
and the restored Rump. The former might have 
been very formidable. Henry Cromwell in Ireland, 
many in Scotland, the army in Flanders which had 
startled the continent with its efficiency, and Mon- 
tague, the best of the admirals since Blake's death, 
with a good part of the fleet, — all these the Protec- 
toratists could have relied upon. For the Rump 
stood the army at the centre, commanded by Fleet- 
wood, Lambert, and Desborough. By the middle of 
June, however, this danger was plainly over. The 
foes of the Rump acquiesced, some of them sullenly, 
in the new order of things, though Henry Cromwell 
signalized his retirement into private life by a letter 
so finely magnanimous and full of sense, 1 that one 
wishes heartily the noble fellow might have had a 
chance to try his hand at helping his country. The 
Rump prevailed, indeed ; but secretly vast numbers, 
those high in place and the humble, began to turn 
their thoughts to Charles, in exile over the sea, as 
the only source whence could come peace and set- 
tled government. 

The hopelessness of their position brought to the 
energetic little conclave no paralysis. The needs of 
the hour were vigorously met. Fleetwood stood in 
chief command, with Lambert and Monk just below, 
while stout Ludlow was sent to Ireland, and Lawson 
in the fleet was set to balance the influence of Mon- 
tague. The Royalists attempted a rising in August, 
which Lambert promptly quelled by striking a party 
in Cheshire. The Rump were in high spirits, when, 

1 Dublin, June 15. Thurloe, vii. p. 683 etc. 



474 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1659. 

lo, their own Army again refused to submit kindly 
to the civil power! Not indistinctly in the future 
seemed to loom the form of a new Protector; and the 
day seemed near at hand when in October the Rump 
was a second time driven out, — this time by the 
sword of Lambert, in a manner as peremptory as 
that of Oliver himself. 

In these distressed months change followed change 
with much confusion, the leading figures standing, 
now together, now far apart, in combinations strange 
and impossible to foresee. At this latest turn Vane 
is found no longer with the Rump, but with the Army 
men, a position one at first thinks strange enough for 
him, but it is not at all inexplicable. The Rump 
now, as we have seen, could only in a very extraordi- 
nary sense be regarded as a representative of the na- 
tion, and Vane, although until now the very soul of 
the Rump, began to feel that by working with the 
Army men a good result for the country could 
sooner be brought about. Already in the Rump he 
had led in measures looking to its dissolution and the 
election of a new and proper Parliament. So in his 
new relations he continued the desperate effort to 
contrive some frame which might be substituted for 
the existing anarchy, by which England might re- 
main free. Meantime the rag of a Rump persisted, 
guided by Haselrig, Scott, and a certain cool free- 
thinker Neville, backed by a figure who in these days 
began to loom up in the North in portentous propor- 
tions, — that grim minion of Oliver in the subjuga- 
tion of Scotland, afterward the conqueror of Van 
Tromp, " silent old George," General Monk. He 



i6s9-] RICHARD'S PARLIAMENT. 475 

now took sides for the Rump against Wallingford 
House so emphatically, that, as winter drew near, 
Lambert was sent north to confront him with a pow- 
erful army. Government was then in the hands of 
a Committee of Safety of twenty-three, soldiers and 
civilians, Vane being one. As the two armies to- 
ward the close of the year faced one another on the 
border, a sub-committee of the Committee of Safety 
— Vane, Whitlocke, Fleetwood, Ludlow, Sal way, and 
Tichborne— labored to fix a constitution for the fu- 
ture. Vane's influence was here paramount, and it 
was his last effort for his country. The Kingship of 
Charles Stuart was of course set aside as not to be 
thought of. The revival of any form of the Protec- 
torate was also forbidden, whether the man should 
be Fleetwood, Lambert, or Richard Cromwell re- 
stored. All were pledged to a government without 
a Single Person or House of Peers. It was resolved 
to call a new Parliament. Vane reported " That the 
Supreme Power delegated by the People to their 
Trustees, ought to be in some fundamentals not to 
be dispensed with," bringing up again his idea, ex- 
pressed before in the " Healing Question," of a Con- 
stitution. As finally arranged the outcome was as 
follows : the new Parliament was to be of a single 
House elected by the People, the franchise limited 
by certain qualifications for keeping out the danger- 
ous. A supreme Council of State, as heretofore, was 
to be the executive. In the matter of liberty of con- 
science Vane was overruled, for provision was made 
for an Established Church, accompanied by only a 
limited Toleration in which no countenance was to 



476 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1659. 

be shown to the more extreme heretics, such as 
Quakers. The plan never went into fulfilment. The 
influence of Monk grew with every hour, and on the 
26th of December the tough old Rump was a sec- 
ond time restored and proceeded at once to business. 
The Committee of Safety were overthrown by the 
desertion of their most trusted servants. Their own 
soldiers turned against them, and quite notably that 
part of the fleet upon which they had most depended. 
" That which broke the heart of the Committee of 
Safety," says Clarendon, 1 " was the revolt of their fa- 
vorite Vice-admiral Lawson, ... at least as much Re- 
publican as any amongst them ; as much an Indepen- 
dent, as much an enemy to the Presbyterians and to 
the Covenant as Sir Harry Vane himself: and a great 
dependent upon Sir Harry Vane ; and one whom 
they had raised to that command in the fleet, that 
they might be sure to have the seamen still at their 
devotion. This man with his whole squadron came 
into the river and declared for Parliament ; which 
was so unexpected that they would not believe it, 
but sent Sir Harry Vane and two others of great in- 
timacy with Lawson to confer with him." 

Lawson was deaf to the representations of his old 
friends ; Lambert, thwarted, lost all power and influ- 
ence ; Fleetwood became utterly week-kneed. In his 
difficulties his only resource was, " ' Gentlemen, let us 
pray.' He would put himself on his knees before 
them, and when some of his friends importuned him 
to appear more vigorous in the charge he had, . . . 
they could get no other answer from him than ' that 

1 vi. 2967. 



i66o.] RICHARD'S PARLIAMENT. 4 7 7 

God had spit in his face and would not hear him.' " l 
The final word of Vane's public life was uttered 
when he stood on the deck of Lawson, pleading with 
the weather-beaten sailor to stand by the Committee 
of Safety. January 9, 1660, with Lambert, Desbor- 
ough, and others, he was summoned before the re- 
stored Rump, not more than, forty or fifty strong, 
seated before old Lenthall about the central table. 
It was the last time he ever appeared in St. Stephen's. 
His old friends, now estranged, Haselrig, Scott, Nev- 
ille, St. John, Henry Marten, sat there to judge him. 
It was the Long Parliament still, but how strangely 
changed ! What a part he had had in the strivings 
which had made it illustrious, and now it sat in judg- 
ment upon him ! There was no severity, however. 
He was disabled from sitting longer, and ordered to 
Raby Castle to remain in private life. 

The Long Parliament went on to its last day, March 
16, 1660. Monk made his memorable march to Lon- 
don, demanding upon his arrival a more severe rep- 
rimand of the Committee of Safety, particularly of 
Vane and Lambert. How the eyes of men were 
fixed in those days upon that grim figure ! It is said 
he sometimes got drunk, that he possessed the Amer- 
ican accomplishment of tobacco - chewing, and was 
quite untouched by any religious earnestness, though 
he had fought with the Ironsides so many years, and 
to such purpose. He certainly is no heroic figure, 
and yet probably deserves for his conduct in this 
crisis no severe execration. He was faithful as steel 
to Oliver, and declared he would have been as faith- 

1 Clarendon, vi. 2969. 



478 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1660. 

ful to Richard, " but Richard forsook himself." He 
believed the civil power should be above the sword, — 
a good principle, acting upon which he sustained, as 
we have seen him do, the Rump. As to his agency 
in bringing in Charles II, it was after all the only 
thing to be done. The nation in an immense major- 
ity had come to favor it, and Monk but yielded to the 
stream, providing shrewdly, meantime, for his own 
wellbeing. Few indeed, except the poor Regicides, 
who could hope for no mercy, remained at last to 
resist the Stuart. The Commonwealth was a failure. 
Only upon another continent, and under quite differ- 
ent conditions, could men of English stock make the 
idea successful. The most extraordinary genius, 
matchless military prowess, the extremest self-devo- 
tion had all been active for it, but to no purpose. In 
the troubled days at the beginning of the year 1660, 
there was a brief revival of Presbyterianism. The 
one hundred and forty-three members secluded by 
Pride's Purge in 1648, such of them as were left, 
flowed in upon the Rump, reconstituting the Long 
Parliament after the original fashion, and with an 
approach to the original numbers. Provision was 
made in this body for a new Parliament, which the 
nation, discarding all the innovations of the Com- 
monwealth, was to elect at once in the ancient 
fashion. How marked now the spirit of reaction had 
become appeared from the fact that just before the 
dissolution of the reconstituted Long Parliament, on 
March 12th, it was moved that the House should 
testify its abhorrence of the murder of the late King, 
a proposition which fearless Scott met by the fol- 



i66o.] RICHARD'S PARLIAMENT. 479 

lowing outburst : " Though I know not where to 
hide my head at this time, yet I dare not refuse to 
own that not only my hand but my heart also was in 
that action ; " and he ended by declaring that he 
should consider it the highest honor of his existence 
to have it inscribed on his tomb : " Here lieth one 
who had a hand and a heart in the execution of 
Charles Stuart." In this intrepid cry the glory of 
the English Commonwealth leaped upward for a 
moment, then died away forever. The new Parlia- 
ment, known as the Convention Parliament, assem- 
bled in April. Charles was joyfully summoned, and 
on the 29th of May he rode into London upon a 
foal of the mare which had borne Fairfax at Naseby, 1 
through a welcome so enthusiastic that men seemed 
beside themselves. The King enjoyed his own again, 
and sovereignty of the People was appointed to await 
the fullness of time. 

1 Markham, Life of Fairfax, p. 384. 



CHAPTER XX. 

% 

HOW VANE HAS BEEN JUDGED. 

Vane had retired to Belleau, but upon the Resto- 
ration he came nearer London, to his seat at Hamp- 
stead, feeling confident that he might safely do so, 
since the King had promised an indemnity to all 
except such as had been concerned in the trial and 
death of Charles I. Vane, however, it was felt, was 
a character too dangerous to go at large, and early 
in July he was arrested and sent to the Tower. For 
two years his ultimate fate remained uncertain, dur- 
ing which his prison was several times changed, be- 
coming at length a lonely castle in the Scilly islands, 
thrust out from Land's End into the Atlantic. Of 
the men with whom he had striven, Scott, Harrison, 
Hugh Peters, and all such as had a hand in the 
King's execution, when seized, were put to death 
with horrible barbarities. Haselrig in some way 
escaped the scaffold, as did also Marten, who was 
imprisoned for life. Lambert, too, securing the 
King's mercy, lived on for twenty years, subsiding, 
curiously enough for a champion so masculine, into 
an enthusiastic cultivator of flowers, which he loved 
so much that he painted them, and even, if we may 
believe Mrs. Hutchinson, 1 embroidered them. The 

1 Memoirs of Col. Hutchinson, p. 372 (Bohn ed.) 



l66i.] HOW VANE HAS BEEN JUDGED. 48 1 

right arm of Oliver at Preston and Dunbar driving 
a needle through silk as it outlined the petal of a 
tulip ! 

The Parliament of Charles felt that the immunity 
promised had been too broad, and this ominous entry 
at length occurs: 1 "Mr. Thomas moved to have 
somebody die for the Kingdom as well as the King, 
and named Sir Henry Vane." During these months 
of uncertainty, Vane in his dungeon wrapped him- 
self in mystical contemplations, for the most part, 
though now and then, as in a piece called the 
" People's Case Stated," his unconquerable Repub- 
licanism found fiery expression. Now that nothing 
remains for the biographer but to narrate the closing 
scenes, a fit place has been reached for glancing at 
the estimates of Vane, made by men of various ages 
and views. Undoubtedly, it is in place to give some 
history of the fame which one's hero achieves, and 
the reader will not think his patience abused if a few 
pages are devoted to the eulogies and the diatribes of 
which Vane, from his own day to ours, has been the 
subject. 

In an early chapter of this book, abundant illustra- 
tion was given of the widely differing judgments made 
of the American career of Vane, both by contempo- 
raries and authorities of later days. As regards his 
subsequent life the clashing is no less. To critics 
and historians he came to bring not peace but a 
sword, and it is not often the case that before a great 
figure there is such a discord of estimate. The 
reader already knows to some extent what hand- 

1 Parliamentary History, iv. 108, 109. 



482 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1661. 

ling he received in his own day from Cromwellian, 
Presbyterian, and Stuartist. Some further knowl- 
edge of their abuse will of course be a help in outlin- 
ing his traits ; his weak points, naturally, would be 
subjects of attack, and from the revilings, containing 
sometimes, no doubt, grains of truth, valuable illus- 
tration may be obtained of the limitations by which 
he was beset. 

Of Oliverian condemnation, we may select that of 
the excellent Maidstone, an officer of the Protector's 
household, and authority for interesting particulars 
concerning the later days of Cromwell. Writing to 
John Winthrop, Governor of Connecticut, in 1659, 
Maidstone says: "In this interim [just after the 
march of Monk from Scotland to London] the 
House dismisses Sir Henry Vane from sitting in it, 
as a person that had not been constant to Parlia- 
mentary privileges," and declares " that people were 
pleased with the dishonor put upon him, he being 
unhappy in lying under the most catholique prejudice 
of any man I ever knew." 

The Presbyterian view is given by Baxter : ! " Sir 
H. Vane had a set of disciples who first sprang under 
him in New England. But their notions were then 
raw and undigested, and their party quickly con- 
founded by God's providence." Baxter's proofs of 
the divine disfavor visited upon the New England 
Antinomians are certain monstrous births which 
poor Mrs. Hutchinson and one of her female follow- 
ers brought forth, — a sad and disgusting recital. 
It marks notably the advance which the world has 

1 Calamy's Abridgment of Baxter's Life, pp. 98, 99. 



i66o.] HOW VANE HAS BEEN JUDGED. 483 

made in two hundred years, when we find good and 
intelligent men full of such melancholy superstition. 
Baxter continues, that Vane "proved in England an 
instrument of greater calamity to a sinful people. 
. . . He was the principal man that drove on the 
Parliament with that vehemence against the King. 
Being of ready parts, great subtilty, and unwearied 
industry, he labored, and not without success, to win 
others, in Parliament, city, and country to his way." 
After describing his agency in bringing about the 
condemnation of Strafford, Baxter declares : " To 
most of the changes that followed, he was that within 
the House, that Cromwell was without. His gieat 
zeal to inflame the war and to cherish the Sectaries, 
and especially in the Army, made him above all 
men to be valued by that party. His unhappiness 
lay in this, that his doctrines were so cloudily formed 
and expressed that few could understand them, and 
therefore he had but few true disciples. The Lord 
Brooke was slain before he had brought him to ma- 
turity. His obscurity some thought was designed; 
some thought he did not understand himself. He 
was able enough to speak plain when he pleased. 
The two things in which he had most success were 
his earnest plea for universal liberty of conscience, 
and against the magistrates intermeddling with re- 
ligion. He taught his followers to revile the minis- 
try, call them blackcoats, priests, and other names 
savoring of reproach. Cromwell served him as his 
surest friend as long as he could. Cromwell dead, 
he joined with himself Haselrig, and got the Rump 
set up again and a Council of State, got the power 



484 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1660. 

much in his own hands, and formed a model for 
popular government." 

Stuartist writers treat Vane to liberal showers of 
depreciation. Wrote the quaint Anthony a Wood : 
" When he saw Oliver gape after monarchy he be- 
came his great opposer and endeavored to his utmost 
to ruin him by siding with and preaching among 
Anabaptists and Fifth Monarchy men. He endeav- 
ored at the deposition of Richard to be one of the 
rulers of Israel, if the intended match between his 
son Henry and the daughter of Maj. Gen. John Lam- 
bert had not been spoiled by the restitution of the 
Rump Parliament by the generous George Monk." J 
Says the " Biographia Britannica," somewhat later: 
" There appeared not in his composition that wis- 
dom, that judgment, . . . for which he is extolled, — 
an unaccountable medley of enthusiasm and incom- 
prehensible nonsense. ... So much dissimulation 
and enthusiasm, such vast parts and such strong de- 
lusions, good sense and madness, can hardly be be- 
lieved to meet in one man. He was successively a 
Presbyterian, Independent, Anabaptist, and Fifth 
Monarchy man. In sum, he was the Proteus of his 
times, a mere hotch-potch of religion, chief ringleader 
of all the frantic sectarians, of a turbulent spirit and 
working brain, of a strong composition of choler and 
melancholy, an inventor not only of whimseys in reli- 
gion, but of crotchets in the state." 2 

To this may be added Bishop Burnet's word : 
" For though he set up a form of religion in a way 
of his own, yet it consisted rather in a withdrawing 

1 Athens Oxonienses, article "Vane." 2 Article "Vane." 



i66o.] HOW VANE HAS BEEN JUDGED. 485 

from all other forms, than in any new or particular 
opinions and forms ; from which he and his party 
were called ' Seekers,' and seemed to wait for some 
new and clearer manifestations. In these meetings 
he preached and prayed often himself, but with so 
peculiar a darkness, that though I have sometimes 
taken pains to see if I could find out his meaning 
in his works, yet I could never reach it. And since 
many others have said the same, it may be reasonable 
to believe that he had somewhat that was a necessary 
key to the rest. His friends told me he leaned to 
Origen's notion of a universal salvation of all, both 
of devils and the damned, and to the doctrine of pre- 
existence." 1 

Clarendon's portrayals of Vane show all the skill 
of that matchless painter and are by no means un- 
candid. He has often been cited in these pages : 
here is a concluding touch : — 

" Vane was not to be described by any character 
of religion, in which he had swallowed some of the 
fancies of every sect or faction, and was become . . . 
a man above ordinances, unlimited and unrestrained 
by any rules or bounds prescribed to other men, by 
reason of his perfection. He was a perfect enthusi- 
ast, and without doubt, did believe himself inspired, 
which so far clouded his reason and understanding 
(which in all matters without the verge of religion 
was inferior to that of few men) that he did at some 
time believe he was the person deputed to reign over 
the saints for a thousand years." 2 Elsewhere Claren- 

1 Hist, of Ins own Time, i. 228 etc. London, 1809. 

2 Clarendon, vi. 2957. 



486 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1660. 

don declared of one of Vane's books, that in it he 
"found nothing of his usual clearness and ratiocina- 
tion, in which he used much to excel the best of the 
company he kept." 

Of the numerous squibs in which Vane figures 
more or less prominently, the one best worth not- 
ing is " Don Juan Lamberto, a Comical History of 
the late Times, by Montelion, Knight of the Or- 
acle." x This appeared in 1 661, said to be written 
by one Thomas Flatman, and is a lively burlesque 
on public men between the death of Cromwell and 
the Restoration, after the manner of the " Seven 
Champions of Christendom." Vane plays in this a 
great part, as " Sir Vane, the Knight of the most 
Mystical Allegories." In the sketch of his career, he, 
as a child, puts strife between his mother and the 
maids, and makes trouble at Westminster School by 
instigating the boys to break the master's neck. 
When caught, he interprets his advice to the boys 
allegorically : it was not the master's literal neck, but 
the neck of his pride which he wished to break. He 
is represented as cowardly, but through his cunning 
acquiring great influence. Lambert in particular, in 
the burlesque, is under his sway, to whose daughter, 
called the " Overgrowne Childe," Vane's son is rep- 
resented as about to be married. The Council of 
Safety, in which Vane's political career ended, is 
described in a note as a strange medley of persons 
arranged to gratify his over-refined and fantastic no- 
tions, which were much too curious for practical wear 
and tear. 

1 Somcrs Tracts, vii. 104, etc. 



i66o.] HOW VANE HAS BEEN JUDGED. 487 

A few stanzas may be given, too, from anonymous 
diatribes in doggerel. 

"VANITY OF VANITIES, OR SIR HENRY VANE'S PICTURE. 

(To the tune of the Jews' Cor ant.} 

" Have you not seen a Bartholomew baby, 
A pageant of policy as fine as may be, 
That 's gone to be shown at the manor of Raby, 
Which nobody can deny ? 

" There never was such a prostitute sight, 
That ere profaned this purer light, 
A hocus-pocus juggling Knight, 
Which nobody can deny. 



" His cunning state tricks and oracles, 
His lying wonders and miracles, 
Are turned at last into Parliament shackles, 
Which nobody can deny. 

" He sate late in the House so discontent, 
With his arms folded and his brows bent, 
Like Achitophel to the Parliament, 
Which nobody can deny. 



" Of this state and Kingdom he is the bane; 
He shall have the reward of Judas and Cain, 
And twas he that overthrew Charles his wain, 
Which nobody can deny. 

"Should he sit where he did with his mischievous brain, 
Or if any of his Councils behind do remain, 
The House may be called the labor in Vain, 
Which nobody can deny." 1 

The following stanzas are from a song belonging 
to the time of Vane's imprisonment in the Tower 
just before his execution. 

1 Rump: or an Exact Collection relating to the Late Times. Lon- 
of the Choycest Poems and Songs don, 1662. (Reprint.) Vol. ii. p. 

108 etc. 



488 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1660. 



"A PSALM OF MERCY. 

[Usula reads and all the Sisters sing.] 

(To the tune of" Now thanks to the Powers below") 

[Sing it in the Nose.] 

" What a Reprobate crew is here, 
Who will not have Jesus reign ? 
But send all our Saints 
To Bonds and Restraint, 

And kill 'um again and again ? 
Let's rise in a holy fear, 

And fight for our heavenly King ; 
We will ha' no power 
But Vane in the Tower 
To rule us in anything ! 
Come Sister, and sing 
An Hymne to our King, 

Who sitteth on high Degree ; 
The Men at Whitehall, 
And the wicked shall fall, 
And hey, then up go We. 

A Match, quoth my sister Joyce; 
Contented, quoth Rachel too : 
Quoth Abigaile, yea, and Faith, verily, 
And Charity, let 't be so. 

" Our Monarchy is the Fift, 

Shall last for a thousand years; 
O' the wicked on earth, 
There shall be a dearth, 

When Jes?is himself appears ! 
No mortal King nor Priest, 

No Lord nor Duke wee'l have, 
Wee'l grind 'um to Grist 
And live as we list, 

And we will do wonders brave ; 
Come Dorcas and Cloe, 
With Lois and Zoe, 

Young Letice and Beterice and Jane, 
Phill, Dorothy, Mawd, 
Come troup it abroad, 

For now is our time to rei<rn. 



i66o.] HOW VANE HAS BEEN JUDGED. 489 

Sa, sa, quoth my sister Bab, 
And kill 'urn, quoth Margery ; 
Spare none, cry's old Tib, nor quarter say's Lib. 
And hey ! for our Monarchy." 1 

July 25, 1660, this epitaph for Vane was hawked 
about London : 

" Here lyes the body of Henry Vaine we know 
Was traytor both to King and Country too. 
Reproach and baseness he'l bring to this grave. 
He liv'd like a tyrant and dy'd like a knave. 

" Now let all traytors take a president by mee 
Where e'er they be, 

And know rebellion is a dangerous thing. 
Let peasants not be princes but obey the law, 
And stand in awe 
Of such a sweet & gracious loving King." 2 

So much for the contemporary obloquy. The 
statesmen with whom he wrestled carp ; scholar and 
preacher have their fling; the mob of the street 
throws handfuls of mud. Truly, Vane in his later 
years was, as Maidstone declared, " unhappy in 
lying under a most catholique prejudice." In every 
age, however, the prophets are stoned. For our ears 
all this condemnation is quite drowned by the pane- 
gyrics, already cited, of steadfast, high-hearted Lud- 
low, and of the inspired Milton. To their tributes 
we shall add here but one voice. Vane's close depen- 
dants and followers, if his earliest biographer Sikes 
may be taken as a fair example, are little worthy of 
notice. A certain Henry Stubbe, however, was a 
man of different pattern and well deserves a word. 

1 The Rump : an Exact Collection, etc., vol. ii. 193 etc. 

2 Thowasson Tracts, MDCCCXLIX. 



490 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1660. 

Anthony a Wood, though of such different ideas, 
is forced to praise him. 1 His mother, a poor seam- 
stress, managed to send him, when a boy of ten, to 
Westminster School, where Vane became his patron, 
"frequently relieved him with money, and gave him 
liberty to resort to his house, and to fill that belly 
which otherwise had no sustenance but what one 
penny could purchase for his dinner: and as for his 
breakfast, he had none except he got it by making 
somebody's exercise. Soon after Sir Henry got him 
to be King's scholar." Stubbe grew up into a curious 
figure, with " a hot restless head (his hair being carrot- 
colored), his body macerated almost to a skeleton;" 
but Anthony a Wood speaks with wonder of his at- 
tainments and readiness, although he was an out- 
spoken free-thinker. He was voluble, had " a big, 
magisterial voice, and mind equal to it, and was of a 
high, generous nature. He scorned riches and the 
adorers of them." How worthy a disciple of Vane 
Henry Stubbe became, a passage or two will show, 
taken from his " Defence of the Good Old Cause," 
published in 1659. As to a proper polity he de- 
clares : 2 " The People are the efficient cause of mag- 
istracy, and from them is all power derived. Magis- 
tracy is not a paternal right, nor consequence thereof, 
either in Scripture or nature." Here, too, is a fine 
expression of tolerance : 3 "I should have become 
an advocate for those of the Episcopal divines, who 
... in their prosperity were neither rash in defining 
nor forward in persecuting, soberly tender con- 

1 A thence Oxonienses, iii. 1070 etc. 

2 p. 4. s pp. 131, 132. 



1660.] HOW VANE HAS BEEN JUDGED. 49 1 

sciences. ... In like manner, I should plead for such 
Catholicks as deny the Pope's power in temporals, to 
depose magistrates, to dispose of lands, or the civil 
obedience of subjects. ... I do profess unto the 
world and acquit myself of any way contributing to 
their oppression." 

Stubbe was as sfrateful as he was free-minded and 

o 

able. When the influence and reputation of his 
great friend began to wane, he took up the cudgels 
for him stoutly, belaboring especially Baxter. 1 " My 
youth and other circumstances incapacitated me from 
rendering any great services : but all that I did and 
all that I wrote had no other aim ; nor do I care how 
much any man can inodiate my former writings, so 
long as they are subservient to him." He declares 
that no good man is so vilified as Vane, " one whom 
not to have heard of is to be a stranger in this land ; 
and not to honor and to admire is to be an enemy to 
all that is good and virtuous. One whose integrity, 
whose uprightness in the greatest employments, hath 
secured him from the effects of their hatred, in whom 
his sincere piety, zeal for the public, and singular wis- 
dom may have raised envy and dread." 

A short space must suffice to show how Vane has 
fared at the hands of generations later than his own. 
Writers of Royalist sympathies but echo the views 
of Clarendon, like Hume, 2 who, while admitting that 
" he was celebrated for his Parliamentary talents and 
for his capacity in business," yet finds him in reli- 
gion and philosophy " absolutely unintelligible. No 
traces of eloquence or even of common-sense appear." 

1 Malice Rebuked, etc., p. 7. 2 vol. vi. p. 26. 



492 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1660. 

Republicans, on the other hand, like Forster, Up- 
ham, and Wendell Phillips, praise him indiscrimi- 
nately, finding him matchless and without spot, both 
in character and intellect. For such an estimate a 
name of great weight can be adduced. Sir James 
Mackintosh is said to have remarked that, " Sir 
Henry Vane was one of the most profound minds that 
ever existed, not inferior, perhaps, to Bacon. His 
works which are theological display astonishing 
powers. They are remarkable as containing the first 
direct assertion of liberty of conscience." * 

Our list of conflicting judgments may well con- 
clude with the grotesque and belittling picture of 
Carlyle. 

" Doubtful, I think, whether without great effort 
you could have worshipped the Younger Vane. A 
man of endless virtues, says Dryasdust, who is much 
taken with him, and of endless intellect; but you 
must not very specially ask, How or Where ? Vane 
was the Friend of Milton : that is almost the only 
answer that can now be sfiven. A man, one rather 
finds, of light fibre this Sir Harry Vane. Grant all 
manner of purity and elevation ; subtle high dis- 
course; much intellectual and practical dexterity: 
there is an amiable, devoutly zealous, very pretty 
man ; but not a royal man ; alas, no ! On the whole 
rather a thin man. Whom it is even important to 
keep strictly subaltern. Whose tendency towards 
the Abstract, or Temporary-Theoretic, is irresistible : 

1 North American Revievu, Oc- himself and Mackintosh in Lon- 
tober, 1S32; report by A. H. Ev- don, in 1817. 
erett of a conversation between 



l66o.] HOW VANE HAS BEEN JUDGED. 493 

whose hold of the Concrete, in which lies always the 
Perennial, is by no means that of a giant, or born 
, Practical King ; — whose ' astonishing subtlety of in- 
tellect' conducts him not to new clearness, but to ever- 
new abstruseness, wheel within wheel, depth under 
depth ; marvellous temporary empire of the air ; — 
wholly vanished now, and without meaning to any 
mortal. My erudite friend, the astonishing intellect 
that occupies itself in splitting hairs, and not in twist- 
ing some kind of cordage and effectual draught- 
tackle to take the road with, is not to me the most 
astonishing of intellects ! and if, as is probable, it get 
into narrow fanaticisms ; become irrecognisant of the 
Perennial because not dressed in the fashionable 
Temporary ; become self-secluded, atrabiliar, and per- 
haps shrill -voiced and spasmodic — what can you 
do but get away from it, with a prayer, ' The Lord 
deliver me from thee ! ' I cannot do with thee. I 
want twisted cordage, steady pulling and a peaceable 
bass tone of voice; not split hairs, hysterical spas- 
modics, and treble ! Thou amiable, subtle, elevated 
individual, the Lord deliver me from thee." 1 

In such a summary of opinions as has been pre- 
sented, we have what may be called a history of the 
fame of Vane. Is it quite impossible to reach a satis- 
factory knowledge of the man ? Few names more 
authoritative can be found in the whole great com- 
pany of English writers than several that have been 
cited. How could the lack of unanimity be greater ! 
The biographer would show indeed a very strange 

1 Cromwell, vol. ii. p. 6. 



494 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1660. 

temerity who did not feel a grave shrinking of the 
spirit as he added his own judgment to the long 
series. Summoning such wisdom as he can, the> 
present writer faces the problem. 

How one can ponder the story which has been 
told without recognizing in Vane a statesman of 
the first class, it is quite impossible to see. What 
finer political achievement has the world ever seen 
than the establishment and maintenance for so long 
a period of the English Commonwealth ; and what 
can be more plain than that next to Cromwell, the 
principal agent in founding and maintaining it was 
Vane ? From the death of Pym and Hampden in 
1643 through the ten great years to 1653, he was un- 
mistakably the civil leader, — as his enemy Baxter 
declared, that in the State which Cromwell was in the 
field. These pages have presented the great crises 
that signalized the uprising of the magnificent struc- 
ture of the Independents, — the Solemn League and 
Covenant, the Self-Denying Ordinance, the New 
Model, the establishment of Liberty of Conscience, 
the proclamation of the principle of the Sovereignty 
of the People, the unequalled struggle in which two 
sevenths of England vanquished five-sevenths and 
besides, Ireland, Scotland, and the first naval power 
of Europe. If we except Cromwell, the conspicuous 
figure in each one of these great moments is Vane. 
Always, he either originates, or speedily adopts and 
becomes a main upholder. Moving ever in the midst 
of a fierce whirlwind of war, though never with sword 
in hand, yet the fleets could not sail nor the armies 
march without his fiat. What better qualities do the 



t66o.] HOW VANE HAS BEEN JUDGED. 495 

intellect and character of man possess than those 
richly illustrated in his career, — astuteness, enter- 
prise, persistence, fortitude, intrepidity, eloquence, 
self-abnegation ! Like all things human, his actions 
are not exempt from moral blame. His keenness be- 
comes sometimes too much like craft ; but it is to cir- 
cumvent bigots or unearth the wiles of cheats. Like 
all things human, his ability was not infallible, and 
his party sometimes forsook him as wanting in judg- 
ment ; yet, really, it cannot even now be said that 
he was wrong and they right. Who can be sure that 
Pride's Purge was not, as he believed it to be, an 
outrage upon the Long Parliament as unnecessary 
as it was arbitrary ; that the execution of Charles was 
not, as he believed, a terrible blunder ; that the dis- 
solution of the Rump was not, as he believed, a blow 
most fatal and most unnecessary to all for which the 
Independents had striven ? As to practical states- 
manship, this book has been written to no purpose 
if it does not show that there has never been a 
higher aptitude in adapting means to ends in the 
heavy pressure of a difficult hour. Again, in the field 
of political theory, no mind has ever grasped more 
strongly the principles of Anglo-Saxon liberty or 
outlined more clearly the foundations upon which 
popular government must be constructed. If the 
Written Constitution be, in our American system, 
the one unique feature, and if such a bridle upon the 
too variable popular will must always be indispensable 
to the happy issue of a free polity, what finer title to 
a great fame can be shown than for the man who 
made the first clear exposition of the Constitutional 
Idea? 



496 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1660. 

If we look at the relative rank of Vane among the 
Republicans of his time, Marten, Bradshaw, St. John, 
Scott, Haselrig, Ireton, Ludlow, Lambert, the figures 
in the midst of whom we have seen him, plainly, in 
that group he was allowed precedence, except when 
in desperation before their dangers, the judgments of 
these men became clouded ; and in the historical per- 
spective, however great and useful they may have 
been, their forms grow small in the presence of the 
young Knight of Raby. Pym and Hampden died 
before the great day, — proto-martyrs of freedom ; no 
one can say into what they might have matured. In 
Ireton, too, there was a promise that portended the 
very noblest development, but it was blasted before 
the unfolding. 

And now as to Vane and Cromwell. There is no 
room to quarrel with the estimate which puts Crom- 
well, among the heroes of the Commonwealth, into 
a class by himself. Was he the greatest man who 
ever lived ? Perhaps. At any rate, no man of his 
time gives such evidence of marvellous power, and in 
proportion as one penetrates, by means of his letters, 
speeches, and prayers, into the secrets of his spirit, 
he feels that there was a commensurate nobility of 
soul. No one in our time is likely to adopt the view 
of Forster, 1 that Vane and Cromwell were in reality 
men of equal mark, and that it was mainly the ab- 
sence of the spur of personal ambition in the former 
that secured to his yoke-fellow a position in the eyes 
of the world so superior. If Cromwell did not sur- 
pass all other characters of history in his mastery of 

1 Life of Vane, p. 283. 



l66o.] HOW VANE HAS BEEN JUDGED. 497 

circumstances, he had no peer in his own generation, 
at least, and those that know best the secrets of his 
heart have least to say about the presence there of 
an evil craving for fame and power. And yet, up to 
the year 1653, there is no absurdity in placing Crom- 
well and Vane nearly side by side. No doubt the 
name of the soldier was more in the mouths of men. 
In the eyes of the unthinking mass nothing fasci- 
nates like the flash of a sword ; no titles to fame 
are so valid as to face a battery or charge with a 
troop. Wise men, however, knew that Marston Moor 
and Naseby were really no more the triumphs of the 
man that broke Rupert and Sir Marmaduke, than the 
man who brought David Leslie over the border, and 
engineered the shelving of the incapables, — that 
even Preston and Dunbar would have been impos- 
sible but for the careful contriving at Derby House 
and Whitehall. When Blake at last arose, almost out- 
thundering from his fleet the triumphs of Cromwell 
himself, the administration behind was not over- 
looked which had created the fleet out of nothing, 
given it guns and men, and at last put Blake in com- 
mand upon the quarter-deck of the flagship. How 
Cromwell and Vane stood, in the judgment of the 
best minds in those great years, we may know best 
from the testimony of Milton, one of the ablest of 
his kind, in his Latin secretaryship in daily contact 
with the men, and privy to all that they achieved. In 
the two memorable sonnets, the spirit of Milton ut- 
tered itself almost at the same moment, and it can 
scarcely be said that the tribute is stronger in the 
one case than the other. Indeed it was not until the 



498 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1660. 

Protectorate that the true kingly quality of Oliver 
became manifest to his generation. We gravely err 
when we suppose that almost from the convening of 
the Long Parliament his was the dominating figure. 
He rose, in fact, but slowly upon his age. He receives 
to-day credit for much that really should be ascribed 
to humbler names. At Marston Moor, Naseby, and 
in the campaign of 1648, he was scarcely superior to 
Fairfax, either in valor or conduct. 1 It was not until 
those five final years when, subduing to his hand a 
multitude of unwilling forces, he guided England to 
the leadership of the world, that he can be said to 
have fairly vindicated for himself a place among the 
supreme men of all time. 

But while a high position is claimed for Vane as a 
civil leader, it must be distinctly said that his limita- 
tions were no less marked than his abilities. Says 
Masson : " With all his astuteness, clearness and 
shrewdness in business matters, he carried in his 
head a mystic metaphysics which he found it hard to 
express." Even in his youth he had a love for vapory 
theorizing. It was that, no doubt, that attracted him 
in Massachusetts to Mrs. Hutchinson, and he plunged 
into the hair-splitting of the dismal controversy of 
which she was the centre, with a genuine zest. The 
absorptions of his active years must have made 
necessary to him a very sparing indulgence of his 
visionary tastes. With his retirement, however, in 
1653, his mind became curiously clouded with fanati- 
cal dreams, and anything more profitless than much 

1 Markham's Life of Fairfax contains interesting suggestions on 
this point. 



i66o.] HOW VANE HAS BEEN JUDGED. 499 

of the elaborate rhapsodizing of his later life can 
scarcely be imagined. Says Mr. Peter Bayne of the 
" Retired Man's Meditations " : 1 " In the forenoon, 
under the influence of strong tea, and with an alarm 
clock to go off at your ear every twenty minutes, you 
might make something of it. I have been too sig- 
nally defeated to try again." The present writer 
knows of no stimulant capable of spurring his own 
power of attention through a tangle so perplexed. 
What were really Vane's ideas was a puzzle to his 
contemporaries ; and it is quite useless now to at- 
tempt to outline them. As one reads, he encounters 
fancies from Antinomian sources, from the Ana- 
baptists, from the Fifth Monarchy men, with much 
that we must think unique. When liberty of con- 
science was proclaimed, there was a wonderful open- 
ing of flood-gates, the human spirit pouring itself out 
with an impetuosity that made the stream to the last 
degree turbid. Fancies most wild, often most un- 
clean, floated to the surface, and it cannot be won- 
dered at, that when quiet men contemplated such 
a picture of them as Edwards, with no extraordinary 
exaggeration, presented in the " Gangraena," they 
were horrified, and felt that no restraint of Prelate or 
Presbyter would be so hard to bear as the free course 
in society of such a torrent. For a time, the pros- 
pect was certainly alarming to all except such strong 
and wise minds as knew that, if things were left to 
themselves, the hard sense of Englishmen would at 
length bring order out of the extravagance. One does 

1 Quoted from Contemporary Rev. in LitteWs Living Age, CXVII, 
P- 338. 



500 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1660. 

not like to find Vane touched by these fanaticisms, 
but there is no doubt that he was much overcome 
by them. He appears to have had enthusiastic fol- 
lowers, known as the " Vaneists," whom he entertained 
from the pulpit with the vagaries which he after- 
wards committed to paper. These superstitious 
maunderings contrast remarkably enough with the 
terse outbursts of the great Republican leader of 
Richard's Parliament and the magnificent sentences 
in parts of the " Healing Question," uttered at the 
same period. How could two men so different be 
wrapped in the same skin, — one possessed of the 
clearest-eyed discernment, the readiest possible hand 
for action, a capacity for expression quite unsur- 
passed, — the other moon-struck even in an age of 
simpletons, a coryphaeus in the dance of cranks ! 

Such inconsistency as that of Vane is, however, 
by no means without parallel. As we study anti- 
quity, we are often called upon to wonder how strong- 
hearted heroes in the midst of great achievements 
can allow their spirits to be suddenly overcast with 
childish awe, as they turn aside because the sacred 
chickens refuse their corn, or tremble with fear be- 
cause it thunders on the left. In our own day think 
of a Faraday surrendering himself in the field of sci- 
ence only to star-eyed guidance, but in the field of re- 
ligion to that of the purblind Robert Sandeman ! In 
the days of the Commonwealth sense and nonsense 
were often bedfellows after the strangest fashion. 
Harrison could in one hour debate with cool political 
wisdom the settlement of the State, or guide the move- 
ments of a host like a consummate commander; and 



i66o.] HOW VANE HAS BEEN JUDGED. 50 1 

in the next rave to a congregation, wild as a Pytho- 
ness upon her tripod, of the immediate breaking by the 
seven angels of the vials of wrath over the earth, the 
gathering of the whole world to battle in the place 
called Armageddon, the going forth amid lightning 
and earthquakes of Death upon the pale horse, — 
the instant and literal accomplishment of the terrors 
threatened to John in Patmos. As to the Lord Gen- 
eral himself, indeed, if we imagine a modern auditor 
transported to his presence, — hearing him harangue 
the Ironsides from the saddle on the march to Pres- 
ton, or improve the occasion at some prayer-meeting 
of the Council of officers at Whitehall, — it would 
no doubt seem rather the outburst of a Bedlamite, 
than of the matchless master of circumstances. — 
There were rationalists and agnostics in those days as 
cool and critical as in our own. Selden treated the 
religious heats and passions of the hour with refined 
mocking. Harry Marten made light of them almost 
with the frankness of a Robert G. Ingersoll, and 
with more good- nature. In the later days of the 
Commonwealth the Republican Neville becomes 
prominent, a free-thinker so far advanced as not to 
hesitate at the assertion that he found more to help 
him in Cicero than in the Bible. * 

With men of the latter type, Vane in his religious 
phase had no part, but he entertained toward them 
a perfect tolerance. With his cloudiness and nar- 
rowness, he managed to reconcile in some way that 
noble candor which allowed to each conscience the 
right to decide for itself. When Neville, confessing 
himself more Pagan than Christian, was accused of 



502 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1660. 

blasphemy in the House, he found in Vane a de- 
fender. 1 " When they could accuse our Saviour of 
nothing else," he exclaimed, " they brought in blas- 
phemy," and he made light of the charge. He had, 
thought Vane, a right to his faith or no-faith, and 
should be protected in it. Just so he was ready to 
protect Catholic, Unitarian, and Jew. 

Strangely incongruous he was, and yet by no means 
in a way without parallel, — in his political ideas 
identical with the most enlightened modern states- 
men of England or America, — in his religious 
thought overhung by a strange mist of medievalism, 
— in one sphere a man of the broadest practical 
sense, of the highest executive ability, of the most 
far-reaching intellectual grasp, — in another an ex- 
pounder of vague and unreasonable dreams. Let it 
not be thought, however, that his writings in religion 
and philosophy are quite without wisdom. The 
" Meditations concerning Life, penned in his Prison 
State," is noteworthy, in which the idea of forgive- 
ness of enemies and the patient bearing of ills, is 
developed clearly, and in a spirit finely Christian. 

MEDITATIONS CONCERNING MAN'S LIFE, ETC. 

" In reference to our enemies we must take care, 
not to meditate revenge. Yet in some sense, we may 
account it an excellent and worthy revenge, to slight 
the work they can do, whereby we take away the 
pleasure which they think to have in vexing us. 
We must, in suffering injuries, have respect to our- 
selves and to him that offends us. Touching 
ourselves, we must take heed that we do nothing 

1 Burt oil's Diary, Feb. 16, 1659. 



1660.] HOW VANE HAS BEEN JUDGED. 503 

unworthy or unbecoming us, that may give the 
enemy advantage against us. As to him that offends 
us, we should be wise as serpents to ware his assault, 
till our hour is come, and we can gain and conquer 
by dying. 

"It is a weakness of mind not to know how to con- 
temn an offence. An honest man is not subject to 
injury. He is inviolable and unmoveable. Invio- 
lable, not so much that he can not be beaten; but 
that being beaten, he doth neither receive wound 
nor hurt. We can receive no evil but of ourselves. 
We may therefore always say with Socrates, ' My 
enemies may put me to death, but they shall never 
enforce me to do that which I ought not.' 

" Evils themselves, through the wise overruling 
Providence of God, have good fruits and effects. 
The World would be extinguished and perish, if it 
were not changed, shaken and discomposed, by a 
variety and an interchangeable course of things, 
wisely ordered by God, the best Physician. This 
ought to satisfy every honest and reasonable mind, 
and make it joyfully submit to the worst of changes 
how strange and wonderful soever they may seem, 
since they are the works of God and Nature, and that 
which is a loss in one respect, is a gain in another. 

" Let not a wise man disdain or ill resent anything - 
that shall happen to him. Let him know those 
things that seem hurtful to him in particular, pertain 
to the preservation of the whole Universe, and are of 
the nature of those things that finish and fill up the 
course and office of this World." * 

1 Sikes, Life of Vane, p. 125. 



504 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1660. 

In the " People's Case Stated," Vane gives, in a 
somewhat tangled exposition, a philosophy of human 
nature and of politics, which is exceedingly noble. 
At this time, at any rate, his thought is not at all 
Calvinistic. If patiently read, the passage will be 
found to contain an idea which, if accepted, justifies 
perfectly the Republican polity, — that trust in the 
"plain People" in which Abraham Lincoln believed, 
but no more fully than the high-born master of Raby. 

" Every man hath that in himself which by God is 
made a proper and competent judge; for as to all 
sin against God and the righteousness of his law, the 
light of conscience, that is to say, the work of the 
law -in and upon the mind or inward sense, and in 
conjunction with it, doth lighten every one that 
cometh into the world, accusing or excusing, if it be 
but hearkened unto and kept awake. And for all 
such actings as tend to the ruin and destruction of 
man in his outward and bodily concerns, and as he is 
the object of magistratical power and jurisdiction, 
every man hath a judgment of common sense, or a 
way of discerning and being sensible thereof. . . . 
This inferior judgment in man, when it is conjoined 
with and confirmed by the judgment of his superior 
part, is that which we call rational, or the dictates of 
right reason, that man hath a natural right to adhere 
unto, as the ordinary certain rule which is given him 
by God to walk by, and against which he ought not 
to be compelled, or be forced to depart from it by 
the mere will and power of another, without better 
evidence : that is, a higher, a greater, or more certain 



i66o.] HOW VANE HAS BEEN JUDGED. 505 

way of discerning. This, therefore, in scripture, is 
called man s judgment or mans day in distinction from 
the Lord's judgment and the Lord's day ; and this is 
that in every individual man, which in the collective 
body of the People, and meeting of head and mem- 
bers in Parliament, is called the supreme authority, 
and is the public reason and will of the whole king- 
dom, the going against which is in nature as well as 
by the law of nations, an offence of the highest rank 
among men ; for it must be presumed that there is 
more of the wisdom and will of God in that public 
suffrage of the whole nation, than of any private per- 
son or lesser collective body whatsoever. . . . For 
man is made in God's image, or in a likeness, in judg- 
ment and will unto God himself, according to the 
measure that in his nature he is proportioned and 
made capable to be the receiver and bearer thereof. 
Therefore it is, that the resisting and opposing either 
of that judgment or will which is in itself supreme, 
and the law to all others, is against the duty of any 
member of that society, as well as it is against the 
duty of the body of the whole society to oppose its 
judgment and will to that of the supreme lawgiver, 
their highest sovereign, God himself. . . . 

" That common consent, lawfully and rightfully 
given by the body of a nation, and intrusted with dele- 
gates of their own free choice, to be exercised by them 
as their representatives (as well for the welfare and 
good of the body that trusts them, as to the honour 
and well-pleasing of God, the supreme Legislator), 
is the principle and means, warranted by the law of 
nature and nations, to give constitution and admis- 



506 yoi t ::g .-7: henry vane. [1660. 

sion to the exercise of government and supreme au- 
thority over them and among them : agreeable here- 
unto, we are to suppose that our ancestors in this 
kingdom did proceed, when they constituted the 
government thereof, in that form of administration 
which hath been derived to us in the course and 
channel of our customs and laws ; among which, the 
law and customs in and of the Parliaments are to be 
accounted as chief." 



CHAPTER XXI. 

THE TRIAL BEFORE THE COURT OF KING'S BENCH. 

As the second year of Vane's imprisonment drew 
toward a close, he sent, March 7, 1662, a letter from 
his dungeon in the Scilly Islands to his wife, the 
sentences of which, full of affection and trustful 
piety, appeal far more powerfully to the heart than 
many of his more elaborate writings. 

" My dear Heart, The wind yet continuing con- 
trary, makes me desire to be as much in converse 
with thee as the providence of God will permit. . . . 
It is no small satisfaction to me in these sharp trials, 
to experience the truth of those Christian principles, 
which God, of his grace, hath afforded you and me 
the knowledge, and imboldened us to make the pro- 
fession of. Have faith and hope, my dearest. . . . 
This dark night and black shade which God hath 
drawn over his work in the midst of us, may be, for 
aught we know, the ground color to some beautiful 
piece that he is now exposing to the light. . . . Out 
of love and faithfulness I am made to drink of this 
bitter cup to help forward that necessary work in me 
wherein consists the glorious liberty of the sons of 
God." 

Contemplating the probable confiscation of his 



508 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1662. 

means, he says : " The Lord grant me and mine to 
be content, if he deny us to live of our own, and will 
bring us to the daily bread of his finding, which he 
will have us wait for, fresh and fresh from his own 
table, without knowing of it beforehand. Peradven- 
ture there is a greater sweetness and blessing in such 
a condition than we can imagine until we have tried 
it. . . . They that press so earnestly to carry on my 
trial, do little know what presence of God may be 
afforded me in it. . . . Nor can they, I am sure, im- 
agine how much I desire to be dissolved and be with 
Christ, which of all things that can befall me I ac- 
count best of all. ... If the storm against us grow 
higher and higher, so as to strip us of all we have, 
the earth is still the Lord's and the fullness thereof. 
... I know nothing that remains to us but, like a 
tossed ship in a storm, to let ourselves be tossed and 
driven by the winds, till He that can make these 
storms to cease and bring us into a safe haven, do 
work out our deliverance for us. I doubt not but you 
will accordingly endeavor to prepare for the worst." 

Shortly after, he was removed to the Tower of 
London, and on June 2d arraigned as a " false traitor," 
before the Court of Kind's Bench, in Westminster 
Hall. He stood without counsel, opposing the attor- 
ney-general, the solicitor-general, and four other law- 
yers ; among these were Glyn and Maynard, who had 
also taken part against Strafford. As strong Pres- 
byterians, these men had figured in the Long Parlia- 
ment against Charles I ; but in the changes they had 
come to stand again upon the side of the Stuart, 
showing a hardness that shocked even the Cavaliers, 



1662.] BEFORE THE COURT OF KING'S BENCH. 509 

and which has earned for them a Hudibrastic immor- 
tality : — 

" Did not the learned Glyn and Maynard 

To make good subjects traitors strain hard ? " 

Vane came forth from the Tower among his ac- 
cusers like Samson from his dungeon among the 
Philistines. His bodily strength was not touched by 
his incarceration, nor had his mind become wasted, 
although busy to such an extent with incoherent 
dreams. His ability was never more memorably ex- 
erted than during his trial. There were times when 
he seemed to have within his grasp the very pillars of 
the Stuartist power, shaking them almost to their 
fall. No wonder that Charles and his counsellors 
felt he was too dangerous to be allowed to live. 

A profound impression of the significance of the 
occasion weighed upon his mind. In the course of 
the trial he declared : — 

" In general, I do affirm of this case, that it is so 
comprehensive as to take in the very interests of 
heaven and earth : 1st, of God, the universal Sover- 
eign and King of Kings, 2d, that of earthly sover- 
eigns, who are God's vice-gerents : as also the inter- 
ests of all mankind, that stand in the relation of 
subject to the one or the both those sorts of sover- 
eigns. This in general. More particularly : within 
the bowels of this case is that cause of God that 
hath stated itself in the late differences and wars 
that have happened and arisen within these three 
nations, and have been of more than twenty years' 
continuance." x 

1 State Trials (Howell), vi. 180. ment writ by the prisoner but re- 
" Reasons for an Arrest of Judg- fused to be heard by the Court." 



510 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1662. 

He cared little for his own life, but in him the 
great cause, whether the People had a right to gov- 
ern themselves, was set up for judgment, and he 
exerted all his powers. Sometimes he urged before 
his judges the eternal principles of liberty; some- 
times with all his old subtlety he plagued them with 
technical objections ; sometimes, when they were in- 
solent, he overwhelmed them with his authoritative 
personality, prisoner though he was, until the court 
seemed to shrink in the presence of the giant who 
had come down from the Commonwealth among the 
dwarfs of the Restoration. 

June 2d, at the arraignment, the indictment was 
read, which charged him with "traitorously imagining 
and intending the death" of Charles II, and " trying 
to overturn the ancient government of England." 

In answer to the indictment, he urged that as the 
offences charged in it were committed by him as a 
member of Parliament, or as acting in obedience to 
it, no inferior court, but only Parliament itself, ac- 
cording to long-established usage, was qualified to sit 
in judgment upon him. He, therefore, objected to 
pleading either guilty or not guilty, as that would 
be recognizing the jurisdiction of the tribunal. " It 
may be better," he said, " to be immediately de- 
stroyed by special command, without any form of law. 
It is very visible beforehand that all possible means 
of defence are taken and withheld. Far be it from 
me to have knowingly, maliciously, or wittingly 
offended the law, rightly understood and asserted ; 
much less to have clone anything that is morally evil. 
. . . If I can judge anything of my own case, the 



i662.] BEFORE THE COURT OF KINGS BENCH. 5 1 1 

true reason of the present difficulties and straits I 
am in is because I have desired to walk by a just 
and righteous rule in all my actions, and not to serve 
the lusts and passions of men, but rather to die than 
wittingly and deliberately to sin against God and 
transgress his holy laws, or prefer my own private in- 
terest before the good of the whole community I re- 
late unto, in the Kingdom where the lot of my resi- 
dence is cast." 

Vane said much more than this in a strain of similar 
exaltation. After much urging, and upon the promise 
that counsel should be assigned to him, " he not 
being versed in the punctilios of law writings and 
pleas," he at length was persuaded to plead not 
guilty, upon which he was sent back to the Tower, 
his trial beginning in due form four days later. 

Upon Vane's claiming the benefit of counsel, the 
judges told him " They would be his counsel." He 
had to fight his battle alone. The attorney-general, 
Sir Geoffrey Palmer, began by specifying the overt 
acts upon which the indictment was based. " Though 
he be chargeable for any crime of treason since the 
beginning of the late war, yet we shall confine the 
facts of which we charge him to the reign of his pres- 
ent Majesty." The counts were few and for the most 
part incontrovertible. The first was that on the day 
of the execution of Charles I, his hand and seal were 
found to a warrant to officers of the Navy about a 
summer's guard for the Narrow Seas. Vane in his 
defence solemnly avowed that he was at this time 
completely out of public life. Two witnesses, how- 
ever, swore to Vane's hand. Entries in the Com- 



512 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1662. 

mons Journals were then cited recording the estab- 
lishment of the Council of State, and its character, — 
that it was to suppress the attempts of any one pre- 
tending to the kingship, whether the son of the late 
King or any one else. Palmer argued that an inten- 
tion was implied to destroy, if possible, the person of 
the young Charles, and do away with kingly govern- 
ment. The Journals were further cited to show the 
appointment of Vane upon this Council, February 
14, 1649, that he had accepted and acted upon the 
instructions laid down for it, and that he had also 
been Treasurer of the Navy. It was proved that he 
had once been president of the Council, and that he 
was active on the Committee for Scotch and Irish 
affairs, where he was often in the chair. As to 
Vane's later career, it was proved that he had be- 
longed to the Committee of Safety of 1659, and in 
that office maintained the Commonwealth, which was 
keeping out the King: moreover, that he had pro- 
posed a new model of government (his scheme, here- 
tofore given, 1 was cited) of which one feature was a 
resolution declaring it destructive to the People's 
liberty to admit any King into power. It was proved, 
moreover, that he had been at the head of a com- 
pany of soldiers in Southwark. 

Excepting the first allegation, implying that Vane 
had a part in the government on the day of the death 
of Charles I, there was nothing in the list of charges 
not strictly true ; they were acts treasonable in Roy- 
alist eyes, but heroic to the Republicans. Vane de- 
manded delay, that he might summon witnesses on 

1 See page 475. 



1 662.] BEFORE THE COURT OF KING'S BENCH. 513 

his part, and prepare for a defence. This was denied 
him, and he was at once required to speak. He 
afterwards wrote out in prison the substance of what 
he said, from which the following abridged account 
is taken : — 

" The causes that did happen to move his late 
Majesty to depart from his Parliament and continue 
for many years, not only at a distance and in a dis- 
junction from them, but at last in a declared posture 
of enmity and war against them, are so well known 
and fully stated in print, not to say written in char- 
acters of blood on both parts, that I shall only men- 
tion it and refer to it. This matter was not done in 
a corner. The appeals were solemn, and the deci- 
sion, by the sword, was given by that God who, being 
the judge of the whole world, does right, and cannot 
do otherwise. By occasion of these unhappy differ- 
ences, most great and unusual changes, like an irre- 
sistible torrent, did break in upon us, not only to the 
disjointing that Parliamentary assembly among them- 
selves, but to the creating such formed divisions 
among the people, and to the producing such a gen- 
eral state of disorder, that hardly any were able to 
know their duty, and with certainty to discern who 
were to command and who to obey. All things 
seemed to be reduced, and in a manner resolved into 
their first elements and principles. 

" Nevertheless, as dark as such a state may be, the 
law of England leaves not the subjects thereof, as I 
humbly conceive, without some glimpses of direction 
what to do, in the cleaving to and pursuing of which, 



514 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1662. 

I hope I shall not be accounted nor judged an 
offender; or if I am, I shall have the comfort and 
peace of my actions to support me in and under my 
greatest sufferings." 

Vane here entered upon a learned discussion, citing 
Hooker, Selden, Coke, Bracton, Fleta, Lambard, and 
especially Fortescue, the Lancastrian lawyer. " The 
law of nature," he declared at last, " is part of the 
law of England. This is the law that is before any 
judicial or municipal law, as the root and fountain 
whence these and all governments under God and 
law do flow. This agrees with that maxim, Sains 
populi suprema lex: that being made due and binding 
by this law which to the community, declaring their 
mind by their own free chosen delegates, appears 
profitable and necessary for the preservation and 
good of the whole society." He declared emphati- 
cally that Pride's Purge " made him forbear to come 
to the Parliament for ten weeks, from December 3d 
until near the middle of the following February, or to 
meddle in any public transactions." Here he denied 
the first count of the indictment. As regards the 
other counts, they could not be denied, but Vane 
proudly claimed that he had acted in all things either 
in Parliament, or as the servant of Parliament, and 
was amenable to no tribunal but Parliament. 

" Nor was it for any private or gainful ends to profit 
myself or enrich my relations. This may appear 
as well by the great debt I have contracted, as by the 
destitute condition my many children are in, as to 
any provision made for them ; and I do publicly 



1 662.] BEFORE THE COURT OF KING'S BENCH. 515 

challenge all persons whatsoever that can give infor- 
mation of any bribes or covert ways used by me, 
during the whole time of my public acting." 

As to the usurpation of Cromwell, which he calls 
" plucking up the liberties of the Kingdom by the very 
roots," he declares that " he opposed it, from the be- 
ginning to the end, to that degree of suffering, and 
with that constancy, that well near had cost me not 
only the loss of my estate, but of my very life, if he 
might have had his will, which a higher than he 
hindered ; yet I did remain a prisoner, under great 
hardship, four months, in an island, by his orders." 

As to appearing in arms at any time, Vane showed 
that the business of his colonelcy in 1659 was simply 
" honorary and titular," and that he had never acted 
in other than a civil capacity. 

The defence of Vane has been thought to contain 
clear evidence that he was not a Republican. 1 He 
declares his desire, " to preserve the ancient, well- 
constituted government of England on its basis and 
righteous foundation. I did count it the most likely 
means for the effecting of this to preserve it at least 
in its root, whatever changes and alterations it might 
be exposed unto in the branches. When by the in- 
ordinate fire of the times, two of the three estates 
have for the season been melted down, they did but 
retire into their root, and were not hereby in their 
right destroyed, but rather preserved, though as to 
their exercise laid for awhile asleep, till the season 
came of their revival and restoration." In Vane's 
view, as we well know, the will of the People uttering 

1 Peter Bayne, Littell, cxvii. 332, 333. 



516 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1662. 

itself through their representatives in the House of 
Commons, is the basis of the Government of Eng-, 
land, — the will of the People and nothing else: but 
is it not here implied that the King and House of 
Lords, " preserved in their root during the inordinate 
fire of the times," have a place in that Government, 
and that a proper season may come " for their revival 
and restoration"? In Richard's Parliament, Vane, 
in 1659, had said : " The wise providence of God has 
brought things, in these our days, to the state of 
government as we now find it. I observe a variety 
of opinions as to what our state of government is. 
Some conceive that it is in King, Lords, and Com- 
mons ; that the principles of old foundations yet re- 
main entire. ... It hath pleased God, by well- 
known steps, to put a period and to bring that gov- 
ernment to a dissolution." In 1659, then, Vane 
seems to have felt that King and Lords were gone. 
In 1662, he saw them restored, and appears to declare 
that they were never " in their right destroyed," and 
that he had all along wished to preserve them, being 
parts of " the ancient well-constituted Government 
of England." 

Must we deny to Vane the name Republican be- 
cause he seems, in 1662, to have approved for his 
scheme the institutions of King and Lords ? The 
truth is, few terms are more vague and shifting in 
their meaning than Republic and Republican. 1 Any 
government, in the last century, which was without 
hereditary monarchy, was held to be a Republic ; 
whereas, to-day, the name is given to any government 

1 Sir Henry Maine, Popular Government, p. 210. 



1 662.] BEFORE THE COURT OF KINGS BENCH. 5 I 7 

in which the rule of the many is substituted for that 
of one, or the few. Poland was in the last century a 
Republic, its people Republicans, although it had a 
King in whose election only an oligarchy of nobles 
took part, the People having no voice. In the Re- 
publics of Venice, Genoa, the mediaeval Italian cities, 
again, the many had little or no power, the rule being 
that of an oligarchy. To-day, England, though nom- 
inally a Monarchy, is perhaps, according to the sec- 
ond definition, more truly a Republic than even the 
United States. In England popular government is 
scarcely restrained, whereas in America, as Sir Henry 
Maine so well shows, it is controlled by certain 
powerful brakes. 1 If to believe that power lies with 
the People is to be a Republican, no one was ever 
more so than Vane. The essential thing in his 
scheme always was that a polity must have for its 
only proper basis and righteous foundation that gen- 
eral judgment " which in the collective body of the 
People, and meeting of the head and members in 
Parliament, is called the supreme authority, and is 
the public reason and will of the whole Kingdom ; 
the going against which is in nature, as well as by 
the law of nations, an offence of the highest rank 
among men ; for it must be presumed that there is 
more of the wisdom and will of God in that public 
suffrage of the whole nation, than of any private per- 
son or lesser collective body whatsoever." 2 

He cites repeatedly Fortescue as the authority 
beyond all others to be followed. The supremacy of 

1 Sir Henry Maine, Pop. G07/., 2 People's Case Stated, see p. 
chapter on the " American Consti- 505. 
tution." 



5 18 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1662. 

the national will is with Fortescue the cardinal prin- 
ciple. 1 The King is simply minister, not master; 
the Lords in themselves have no right; the People 
alone is substantially sovereign. Whatever we call 
Vane, he was, first and last, for the sovereignty of 
the People — for the supremacy of manhood, " for 
Man is made in God's image, — in judgment and will 
like unto God himself, according to the measure that 
he is made capable to be the receiver thereof." 

As regards the Stuarts, the tone of Vane's defence is 
somewhat different from his tone in the earlier time. 

Speaking of his return to public life the month 
after the execution of Charles I, he said : " I did de- 
clare my refusal of the oath of abjuration, which was 
intended to be taken by all the members of Parlia- 
ment, in reference to kingly government, and the 
line of his own Majesty in particular. This I not 
only positively refused to take, but was an occasion 
of the second thoughts which the Parliament reas- 
sumed thereof, till in a manner they came wholly at 
last to decline it : a proof undeniable of the remote- 
ness of any intentions or designs of mine, as to the 
endeavoring any alteration or change in the govern- 
ment; and was that which gave such jealousy to 
many in the House, that they were willing to take 
the first occasion to show their dislike for me, and to 
discharge me from sitting among them. I utterly 
refused to approve the execution of the King and 
would not accept of a sitting in the Council of State 
on those terms, but caused a new oath to be drawn. 

1 Fortescue, De Laudibus Legum Anglice. See also Stubbs, Const. 
Hist. Hi. 240 etc. 



1 662.] BEFORE THE COURT OF KING'S BENCH. 5 19 

" And whereas I am charged with keeping out his 
Majesty that now is, from exercising his regal power 
and royal authority in this his kingdom ; — through 
the ill will borne me by that part of the Parliament 
then sitting, I was discharged from being a member 
thereof about January 9, 1660, and by many of them 
was charged, or at least strongly suspected, to be a 
Royalist. . . . This I can say, that from the time I 
saw his Majesty's declarations from Breda, declaring 
his intentions and declarations as to his return, to 
take upon him the actual exercises of his regal office 
in England, and to indemnify 1 all those who had been 
actors in the late differences and wars, ... I re- 
solved not to avoid any public question, ... as rely- 
ing on my own innocency and his Majesty's declared 
favor, as before said. And for the future, I deter- 
mined to demean myself with that inoffensiveness 
and agreeableness to my duty, as to give no just mat- 
ter of new provocation to his Majesty in his govern- 
ment. All this, for my part, hath been punctually 
observed, whatever my sufferings may have been. 
Nor am I willing in the least to harbor any discour- 
aging thoughts in my mind as to his Majesty's gen- 
erosity and favor toward me, who have been faithful 
to the trust I was engaged in, without any malicious 
intentions against his Majesty, or his Crown, or dig- 
nity, as before hath been showed, and I am desirous 
for the future to walk peaceably and blamelessly." 

Let it be remembered that Vane in the summer of 
1647, in concert with the Army chiefs Ireton and 
Cromwell, had done all he could to induce Charles I 

1 To show indemnity to. 



520 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1662. 

to accept the " Heads of Proposals," a form of settle- 
ment which would have given to England a polity 
very like that of to-day — a King, namely, a sover- 
eign in a dignified position, and a House of Lords, 
both, however, possessing only a derived power ; for 
it was arranged that a House of Commons, elected 
by a suffrage much extended, should be supreme, 
acting for the People whom it represented. Charles 
would have nothing to do with such a scheme ; and 
then it was that Vane accepted the more radical pro- 
gramme of the rank and file of the Army, antici- 
pating in his acceptance, according to the excellent 
testimony of Ludlow, both Cromwell and Ireton. 
Though Vane resisted Pride's Purge and the exe- 
cution of the King, nothing in his conduct or his 
speeches — from the time when he became a main 
pillar of the Commonwealth, in February, 1649, up to 
his discharge from public life by the restored Rump, 
in 1660 — indicates that he had any feeling but hos- 
tility to the Stuarts, and that they must never be 
allowed to return to power. When in 1659 the estab- 
lishment of Richard Cromwell's power upon the Peti- 
tion and Advice seemed to Vane a step toward the 
old government, he spoke of the Commonwealth 
as a foundation " upon which we may build a super- 
structure of which we need not be ashamed. Now 
shall we be under-builders to supreme Stuart? We 
have no need, no obligation upon us to return to 
that old government." What do the words imply 
but that he then thought the Stuart race evil, and 
that their return to power would be a calamity ? So 
throughout those years he acted with the opponents 



1662.] BEFORE THE COURT OF KING'S BENCH. 52 1 

of the Stuarts, and no utterance of his can be found 
implying that the Stuarts were to be tolerated as 
rulers of England. — This being so, why, it may be 
asked, was he so careful in 1662 to explain to his 
Royalist judges that he refused in 1649 the oath of 
abjuration of Stuart rule; that he brought obloquy 
upon himself by opposing those who wished to 
change the government; that in 1660 he was dis- 
charged from Parliament and suspected by his former 
friends of being a Royalist; and that he intended in 
future to be inoffensive and agreeable to the restored 
Sovereign toward whom and his Crown and dignity he 
has had " no malicious intentions " ? We have heard 
the intrepid Scott exclaim when all was lost, speak- 
ing of the execution of Charles I, " Though I know 
not where to hide my head at this time, yet I dare not 
refuse to own that not only my hand, but my heart 
also was in that action," and end by saying that he 
asked for no higher epitaph than, " Here lieth one 
who had a hand and heart in the execution of Charles 
Stuart." Why, it may be asked, did not Vane make 
an avowal as decisive, an avowal that he had kept 
out the Stuart as long as he could ? Instead of 
claiming that he had worked " without any malicious 
intentions against his Majesty, his Crown, or dig- 
nity," why did he not admit that he had done him all 
the harm in his power and that he held the Restora- 
tion to be a calamity ? 

It would detract immensely from the impressive- 
ness of Vane's bearing in these last solemn hours, if 
it appeared that he for a moment hedged, — shrank 
from his record, and tried to twist it into a shape less 



522 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1662. 

objectionable to the hostile eyes that were so eagerly 
scanning it. Throughout his trial, and in the dread- 
ful scene upon the scaffold to which we are about 
to proceed, his intrepidity was perfect, and it is 
quite absurd to suppose that there can have been 
even a momentary cringing. What explanation, then, 
can be odven of declarations which seem not in 
accord with the utterances and strivings of his great 
years ? 

Vane, through all, was of a conservative spirit. 
Most unwillingly did he abandon the hope of saving 
the ancient triple polity of King, Lords, and Com- 
mons. Though the People must be supreme, accord- 
ing to what he believed the ancient way, yet King 
and Lords in their place, as ministers not masters, 
and not arrogating to themselves special privileges, 
— he felt were useful functionaries. Forced by cir- 
cumstances, he tried faithfully to establish a consti- 
tution without a Single Person or an Upper House, 
but the failure was complete. It may easily have 
been the case that in his latter days, as he reviewed 
in prison " the inordinate fire of the time," in which 
so much had been melted down, and in whose flame 
he had been forced to move, he felt, as he had not 
felt before, how impracticable in the circumstances 
the effort was which the Commonwealth's men had 
made. Something less revolutionary, he may natu- 
rally have thought, was the only thing possible for 
England ; and, after all, was there not a hope that the 
young Charles, taught by his own bitter experience, 
and with the thought in his soul of his beheaded 
father, might prove at last that constitutional chief 



1662.] BEFORE THE COURT OF KINGS BENCH, 523 

magistrate, who without arbitrary assumption would 
do the People's will ? Charles was good-natured and 
affable ; more than that, he was disposed to mercy. 
The Regicides, to be sure, were torn limb from limb ; 
but in that age it was not unusual cruelty. To all 
others Charles turned graciously ; and the world 
universally — not simply Cavaliers and Presbyte- 
rians, but Cromwellians, ancient Roundheads, even 
the grim remains of the Ironsides whom Charles had 
reviewed upon Black-heath — were ready to credit 
the young monarch with good intentions. Why may 
not Vane have been affected to some extent as the 
world in general were ? Perhaps he forgot how un- 
compromising he had been in past years in his oppo- 
sition : we, who have now his words and the detailed 
record of his deeds before us, are able to see that noth- 
ing could have been sterner. It is easier at any rate 
to believe that he forgot than that he hedged : it is 
easier to believe that when he spoke hopefully of a 
Stuart, he was quite unconscious that his words would 
seem incongruous with anything he had ever said or 
done before, than that for a single moment he showed 
insincerity, in the hope of obtaining mercy. 

His doom became inevitable when he declared in- 
trepidly the subordinacy of the King. By natural 
right and the best lesral authorities he showed how 
" it may appear what superiors the King himself 
hath, — God, Law, and Parliament." 

He concluded by putting questions to the Court, 
of which the following are the essential ones, begging 
again that counsel might be assigned, to argue 
them : — 



524 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1662. 

" i. Whether the collective body of the Parlia- 
ment can be impeached of high-treason ? 

" 2. Whether any person acting by authority of Par- 
liament, can, so long as he acteth by that authority, 
commit treason ? 

" 3. Whether matters acted by that authority can 
be called in question in an inferior court? 

" 4. Whether a King de jure and out of possession, 
can have treason committed against him, he not 
being King de facto, and in actual possession ? " 

Vane's defence has been handed down by himself; 
he wrote out immediately after the trial the substance 
of his plea, a memorandum preserved in the State 
Trials. He fought for his life for ten hours without 
refreshment. It is a noble address, but it was of no 
avail : the jury, after an absence of half an hour, 
brought in a verdict of guilty. In his cell after- 
wards he showed cheerfulness and no si^n that his 
strength was exhausted. There was hope that even 
if condemned, his life might be spared. He was not 
one of the Regicides, and indemnity had been prom- 
ised to all but them. His prominence in the past, 
and the fear of his talents and dispositions, caused 
that he was brought to trial ; but Parliament, after 
much discussion, had agreed that if the jury con- 
victed him, the King should be petitioned for his 
life. 1 and the King had signified that he would grant 
such a petition. Charles II, however, wrote now to 
Clarendon, the Chancellor, the following letter : — 

1 Aug. 22-25, 1660 ; see Pari, of 1662, "more favorable to mon- 

Hist. iv. p. 103 etc., also p. 119. archy, applied for his trial and con- 

The Convention Parliament peti- demnation." Ibid. p. 255. 
tioned the King for Vane, but that 



1662.] BEFORE THE COURT OF KING'S BENCH. 525 

" Hampton Court, Saturday, two in the afternoon. 
The relation that hath been made to me of Sir H. 
Vane's carriage yesterday, in the Hall, is the occasion 
of this letter ; which if I am rightly informed, was so 
insolent as to justify all he had done, acknowledging 
no supreme power in England but a Parliament; 
and many things to that purpose. You have had a 
true account of all ; and if he has given new occasion 
to be hanged, certainly he is too dangerous a man to 
let live, if we can honestly put him out of the w r ay. 
Think of this and give me some account of it to- 
morrow; till w T hen I have no more to say to you." 

Charles was understood in this note to withdraw 
his promise of pardon, an act which has been re- 
garded as one of the greatest stains upon his career. 
He was unquestionably much frightened. In the 
Stuartist conception, what could be more dangerous 
than the doctrines of Vane, and how formidable 
might such a man become if suffered to go at large ? 
Magnanimity was not to be expected from the King. 
Vane was " too dangerous a man to let live," and on 
June nth he was again brought from the Tower to 
receive his sentence. When asked if he had any- 
thing to say why sentence of death should not be 
passed upon him, he proceeded to throw every pos- 
sible technical objection in the way. He demanded 
to have the indictment read in Latin, since it was in- 
scribed in that langruao;e. How otherwise could it be 
told that the translation he had heard rendered it 
properly? He claimed again counsel, to make ex- 
ceptions. This was denied ; whereupon he himself 
offered a bill of exceptions, staggering the judges by 



526 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1662. 

bringing up in support of the proceeding an over- 
looked statute of Edward I : " That if any man 
find himself aggrieved by the proceedings against 
him before any justices, let him write his Exception 
and desire the justices to set their seals to it." After 
a sharp contest the judges, in spite of the statute, de- 
clined to receive the exceptions. " To the bystanders 
their chief reason seemed to be, that it had not been 
practised this hundred or two of years." Vane caused 
each judge to put himself, individually, upon record 
as denying him this right, — a responsibility which 
the bench undertook in some confusion. At last he 
reminded the court that there were certain questions 
of law to be settled before judgment could be passed, 
which he went on to state as follows : — 

" 1. Whether a Parliament were accountable to 
any inferior court ? 

" 2. Whether the King, being out of possession " — 

Here the Court broke in impatiently, " that the 
King was never out of possession," — whereupon 
Vane's instant rejoinder was, that in that case the in- 
dictment must inevitably fall to the ground, for the 
charge it alleged was " that he endeavored to keep 
out his Majesty, and how could he keep him out if 
he were not out? " 

He felt, however, that all was useless, and at length 
accepted his fate. The old reporter of the State 
Trials relates : — 

" But when he saw they would overrule him in all, 
and were bent upon his condemnation, he put up his 
papers, appealing to the righteous judgment of God, 
who (he told them) must judge them as well as him, 



1 662.] BEFORE THE COURT OF KING'S BENCH. 527 

often expressing his satisfaction to die upon this tes- 
timony ; which Keeling, one of the King's counsel, 
insultingly answered : ' So you may, Sir, in good 
time, by the grace of God.' The same person had 
often before showed a very snappish property towards 
the prisoner, and Sir Henry sometimes answered him 
according to his folly : for when he would have had 
the book out of the prisoner's hand, wherein was the 
statute of Westminster, 2d. c. 31 ; Sir Henry told 
him, ' He had a very officious memory, and when he 
was of counsel for him, he would find him books.' 
Whereby was verified what was said to be spoken by 
him, at first, in answer to one of his brethren, on the 
Arraignment-day, ' Though we know not what to 
say to him, we know what to do with him.' " 

The execution was appointed to take place the 
14th of June. The sentence was, that he should be 
hanged, cut down while living, his body cut open, and 
his bowels burned before his face; that his head 
should be severed from his body, and his body then 
quartered. The Chief Justice tried to persuade the 
King that he lay under no obligation to grant the 
petition of Parliament, saying, " God, though full of 
mercy, yet intended his mercy only for the penitent." 
The only favor shown the prisoner was to allow him 
at last to be beheaded, instead of undergoing the 
frightful death described above, a death which the 
Regicides had suffered. 

The bill of exceptions which Vane was not allowed 
to present he carefully prepared, and it has been pre- 
served. It is drawn with ability ; but a more inter- 
esting paper, as giving evidence of his serenity and 



528 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1662. 

elevation of mind as he faced a death of torture and 
ignominy, is his " Reasons for an Arrest of Judg- 
ment, writ by the Prisoner, but refused to be heard 
by the Court." Its tone may be judged from the 
following: — 



*& 



" My Lords : If I have been free and plain with you 
in this matter, I beg your pardon : for it concerns me 
to be so, and something more than ordinarily urgent, 
where both my estate and life are in such eminent 
peril ; nay, more than my life, the concerns of thou- 
sands of lives are in it, not only of those that are in 
their graves already, but of all posterity in time to 
come. Had nothing been in it but the care to pre- 
serve my own life, I needed not have stayed in Eng- 
land, but might have taken my opportunity to with- 
draw myself into foreign parts, to provide for my own 
safety. Nor needed I to have been put upon pleading 
as now I am, for an arrest of judgment ; but might 
have watched upon advantages that were visible 
enough to me, in the managing of my trial, if I had 
consulted only the preservation of my life or estate. 

" No, my lords, I have otherwise learned Christ 
than to fear them that can but kill the body, and 
have no more that they can do. I have also taken 
notice, in the little reading that I have had of history, 
how glorious the very heathens have rendered their 
names to posterity, in the contempt they have showed 
of death, (when the laying down of their life has 
appeared to be their duty) from the love which they 
have owed to their country. Two remarkable ex- 
amples of this, give me leave to mention to you upon 



1 662.] BEFORE THE COURT OF KINGS BENCH. 529 

this occasion. The one is of Socrates, the divine 
philosopher, who was brought into question before 
a judgment-seat, as now I am, for maintaining that 
there was but one only true God, against the mul- 
tiplicity of the superstitious heathen Gods ; and he 
was so little in love with his life upon this account 
(wherein he knew the right was on his side) that he 
could not be persuaded by his friends to make any 
defence, but would choose rather to put it upon the 
conscience and determination of his judges, to decide 
that wherein he knew not how to make any choice 
of his own, as to what should be best for him, 
whether to live or die. The other example is that of 
a chief governor, Codrus, that, to the best of my re- 
membrance, had the command of a city in Greece, 
which was besieged by a potent enemy and brought 
into unimaginable straits. Hereupon, the said Gov- 
ernor makes his address to the oracle to know the 
event of that danger. The answer was, ' That the 
city should be safely preserved, if the chief gover- 
nor were slain by the enemy.' He, understanding 
this, immediately disguised himself and went into the 
enemy's camp, amongst whom he did so comport 
himself that they unwittingly put him to death ; by 
which means immediately, safety and deliverance 
arose to the city, as the oracle had declared. So little 
was his life in esteem with him, when the good and 
safety of his country required the laying of it down." * 

The breaches of legality in this memorable trial 
have been exhibited by high authorities. In consid- 

1 Reasons for an Arrest of Jiidgment, 183. 



530 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1662. 

ering the last hours of Vane, it is impossible not to 
think of those of Strafford. " The one began, the 
other closed, the list of proscriptions furnished by this 
period of civil discord." x The cases are so like and 
yet so unlike ! The one stood for Kingly power, as 
the other stood for that of the People. Here, how 
in contrast the two men ! yet in strength of soul and 
power of mind and character how similar ! Each in 
the eyes of the party which he opposed was " too 
dangerous a man to let live." Each, when arraigned 
at Westminster Hall, like a lion ensnared, tore to 
pieces as if they were so much rotten thread the legal 
meshes in which his hunters sought to hold him fast. 
Each was condemned arbitrarily with small show of 
statutory right. Both at last, representatives of great 
conflicting ideas, resigned themselves calmly and 
prayerfully to their fate, impressive examples of the 
greatness to which man may attain. 

1 Lingard, Hist, of Eng. xii. p 39. 



CHAPTER XXII. 



THE SCAFFOLD. 1 



On the 13th of June, the day before his execution, 
Vane said to his children, 2 who were permitted to 
come to him : 

" You have no cause to be ashamed of my chain, 
or to fear being brought into the like circumstances 
I now am in, so it be on as good an occasion, for the 
name and cause of Christ, and for his righteousness' 
sake. Let this word abide with you whatever befalls 
you. Resolve to suffer anything from men rather 
than sin against God ; yea, rejoice and be exceeding 
glad, when you find it given to you, on the behalf of 
Christ, not only to believe in him, but to suffer for 
his name. . . . O thou whom our souls do love, tell us 
where thou feedest, and makest thy flock to rest at 
noon, under the scorching heat of man's persecuting 
wrath ! 

" God seems now to take all our concerns wholly 
into his own hands. You will be deprived of my 

1 The details of Vane's closing a curious story, for which see Bur- 
hours are from Sikes and The net, Hist, of his Own Times, i. p. 
State Trials. 280, note. This story, which can- 

2 At this time possibly seven not with propriety be given here, 
children were living. Christopher, makes Christopher to have been 
the youngest son, through whom a posthumous son, whereas "other 
the line descends, is the subject of authorities assign his birth to 

1653- 



532 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1662. 

bodily presence, but Abraham's blessing shall come 
upon you. The Lord revive, and cause to grow up 
and flourish, whatever is of that faith of Abraham 
in you that is in your father ; and grant it may more 
and more appear in my family, after I am gone hence, 
and no more seen in my mortal body! " 

As Vane took farewell of his children he said, 
kissing them : " The Lord bless you ; he will be a 
better father to you ; I must now forget that ever I 
knew you. I can willingly leave this place and out- 
ward enjoyments, for those I shall meet with here- 
after in a better country. I have made it my busi- 
ness to acquaint myself with the society of Heaven. 
Be not you troubled, for I am going home to my 
father." 

The sorrowing household found themselves to- 
gether unexpectedly once more on the following day, 
when the doomed father prayed with them. . . . 

" There hath been a battle fought with garments 
rolled in blood, in which (upon solemn appeals on 
both sides) thou didst own thy servants ; though, 
through the spirit of hypocrisy and apostasy, that 
hath sprung up amongst us, these nations have been 
thought unworthy any longer to enjoy the fruits of 
that deliverance. Thou hast therefore another day 
of decision yet to come. Such a battle is to begin, 
and to be carried on by the faith of thy people ; yea, 
is in some sort begun by the faith of thy poor ser- 
vant, that is now going to seal thy cause with his 
blood. O that this decision of thine may remark- 
ably show itself in thy servant at this time, by his 
bold testimony and sealing it with his blood ! 



i662.] THE SCAFFOLD. 533 

" We know not what interruptions may attend thy 
servant ; but, Lord, let thy power carry him in holy 
triumph over all difficulties. 

" O that thy servant could speak any blessing to 
these three nations! Let thy remnant be gathered 
to thee. Prosper and relieve that poor handful that 
are in prisons and bonds, that they may be raised up, 
and trample death under foot. Let my poor family 
that is left desolate, let my dear wife and children, 
be taken into thy care ; be thou a husband, father, 
and master to them. Let the spirits of those that 
love me, be drawn out towards them. Let a blessing 
be upon these friends that are here at this time. 
Show thyself a loving father to us all, and do for us 
abundantly, above and beyond all that we can ask or 
think, for Jesus Christ his sake — Amen." 

As his family withdrew, Vane was heard to say : 
" There is some flesh remaining yet ; but. I must cast 
it behind me and press forward to my father." 

As one goes through Eastcheap to-day out upon 
the open space of Tower Hill, he finds himself among 
prosaic surroundings. Over the pavement rattles the 
traffic to and from the great London docks close at 
hand. High warehouses rise at the side ; the sooty 
trail of steamers pollutes the air toward the river. In 
one direction, however, the view has suggestions the 
reverse of commonplace. Looking thither, the sensi- 
tive beholder feels with deep emotion the fact brought 
home to him, that to men of English speech, the 
earth has scarcely a spot more memorable than the 
ground where he is standing. There rise, as they 
have risen for eight hundred years, the gray walls of 



534 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [[662. 

the Tower — the moat in the foreground ; the battle- 
mented line of masonry behind ; within, the white 
keep with its four turrets, as they were left by the 
architect of William the Conqueror. Where you are 
standing, Shakespeare makes to have stood the for- 
lorn mother of the two princes about to be smothered, 
and here she wept forth that touching apostrophe : 

" Pity, you ancient stones, those tender babes 
Whom envy hath immured within your walls ! 
Rude cradle for such little pretty ones, 
Rough rugged nurse, old sullen playfellow 
For tender princes, use my babies well ! " 

As mothers have shed tears there for imprisoned 
children, so children standing there have wondered 
which blocks in the grim masonry covered the dun- 
geons of their fathers and mothers. Again and 
again, too, through the ages all London has gathered, 
waiting in a hush for the dropping of the drawbridge 
before the Byward tower, and the coming forth of 
the mournful train, conducting some world-famous 
man to the block, draped with black on the scaffold 
to the left where the hill is highest. 

On the 14th of June, 1662, in the full glory of the 
summer, Vane, in the strength of his manhood, was 
brought forth there to die. A disciple who was per- 
mitted to stand by his master writes : x — 

" The day before his execution his friends had lib- 
erty to visit him ; he received them with very great 
cheerfulness ; and when they would have persuaded 
him to make some submission to the King, and to 
endeavor the obtaining of his life, he said, ' If the 
Kinsr do not think himself more concerned for his 

1 State Trials. 



1 662.] THE SCAFFOLD. 535 

honour and word, than he did for his life, he was very 
willing they should take it. Nay, I declare,' said he, 
'that I value my life less in a good cause than the 
King can do his promise.' And when some others 
were speaking to him, of giving some thousands of 
pounds for his life ; he said, ' If a thousand farthings 
would gain it, he would not give it ; and if any should 
attempt to make such a bargain he would spoil their 
market. For I think the King himself so sufficiently 
obliged to spare my life, that it is fitter for him to do 
it, than myself to seek it.' 

" On Saturday, the day of his Execution, he said 
to a friend, ' God bid Moses go to the top of Mount 
Pisgah and die ; so he bid him go up to the top of 
Tower-hill and die.' Several friends being in his 
chamber this morning he oft encouraged them to 
cheerfulness, as well by his example as expression. 
In all his deportment, he shewed himself marvel- 
lously fitted to meet the King of Terrors, without 
the least affiwhtment. But to show where his 
strength lay, he said, He was a poor unworthy wretch, 
and had nothing but the grace and goodness of God 
to depend upon. He said, moreover, Death shrunk 
from him, rather than he from it. . . . 

" He told his friends, the Sheriff's chaplain came to 
him at twelve of the clock that night, with an order 
for his Execution, telling him, he was come to bring 
him the fatal message of death. ' I think, friends, that 
in this was no dismalness at all. After the receipt of 
which, I slept four hours so soundly, that the Lord 
hath made it sufficient for me, and now I am going 
to sleep my last, after which I shall need sleep no 
more.' 



536 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1662. 

" Then Mr. Sheriff coming into the room, was 
friendly saluted by him, and after a little pause com- 
municated a prohibition that he said he received, 
which was, That he must not speak anything against 
his majesty or the government. His answer to this 
he himself relates on the Scaffold. He further told 
Mr. Sheriff, he was ready ; but the Sheriff said he 
was not, nor could be this half hour yet : ' Then, sir, 
it rests on you, not on me,' (said Sir Henry,) 'for I 
have been ready this half hour.' Then the Sheriff, 
at his request, promised him his servants should at- 
tend him on the Scaffold, and be civilly dealt with ; 
neither of which were performed ; (notwithstanding 
this promise they were beaten and kept off the Scaf- 
fold, till he said, ' What, have I never a servant 
here ?')... He went very cheerfully and readily 
down the stairs from his chamber, and seating him- 
self on the sledge (friends and servants standing 
about him) then he was forthwith drawn away to- 
wards the Scaffold. As he went, some in the Tower 
(Prisoners as well as others) spake to him, praying 
the Lord to go with him. 

" And after he was out of the Tower, from the 
tops of houses, and out of windows, the people used 
such means and gestures as might best discover, at a 
distance, their respects and love to him, crying aloud, 
' The Lord go with you, the great God of Heaven 
and Earth appear in you, and for you ; ' whereof he 
took what notice he was capable in these circum- 
stances, in a cheerful manner, accepting their re- 
spects, putting off his hat and bowing to them. Be- 
ing asked, several times, how he did, by some about 



i662.] THE SCAFFOLD. 537 

him, he answered, ' Never better in all my life.' 
Another replied, ' How should he do ill that suffers 
for so glorious a cause ? ' To which a tall black man 
said, ' Many suffered for a better cause ; ' ' and many 
for a worse,' said Sir Henry ; wishing, that when they 
come to seal their better cause (as he called it) with 
their blood (as he was now going to seal his) they 
mi°:ht not find themselves deceived ; and as to this 
cause, said he, it hath given life in death to all the 
owners of it, and sufferers for it. 

" Being passed within the rails on Tower-hill, there 
were loud acclamations of the people, crying out, 
' The Lord Jesus go with your dear soul,' etc. One 
told him, that was the most glorious seat he ever sat 
on ; he answered, ' It is so indeed,' and rejoiced ex- 
ceedingly. 

" Being come to the Scaffold, he cheerfully ascends, 
and being up, after the crowd on the Scaffold was 
broken into pieces, to make way for him, he shewed 
himself to the people on the front of the Scaffold, 
with that noble and christian-like deportment, that he 
rather seemed a looker on, than the person con- 
cerned in the Execution, insomuch that it was diffi- 
cult to persuade many of the people that he was the 
prisoner. 

" But when they knew that the gentleman in the 
black suit and cloke (with a scarlet silk waistcoat, 
the victorious colour shewing itself at the breast) was 
the prisoner, they generally admired that noble and 
great presence he appeared with. 

" ' How cheerful he is,' said some ; ' He does not 
look like a dying man,' said others; with many like 



538 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1662. 

speeches, as astonished with that strange appearance 
he shined forth in. 

" Then, (silence being commanded by the Sheriff) 
lifting up his hands and eyes towards Heaven, and 
resting his hands on the rail ; and taking a very se- 
rious, composed, and majestic view of the great mul- 
titude, about him, he spake as follows : — 

" ' Gentlemen, Fellow Countrymen, and Christians : 

" ' When Mr. Sheriff came to me this morning and 
told me he had received a command from the King, 
that I should say nothing reflecting upon his majesty 
or the government ; I answered, 1 should confine and 
order my Speech, as near as I could, so as to be least 
offensive, saving my faithfulness to the trust reposed 
in me, which I must ever discharge with a good con- 
science unto death ; for I ever valued a man accord- 
ing to his faithfulness to the trust reposed in him, 
even on his majesty's behalf, in the late controversy. 
" ' And if you dare trust my discretion, Mr. Sheriff, 
I shall do nothing but what becomes a good Christian 
and an Englishman ; and so I hope I shall be civilly 
dealt with. 

" ' When Mr. Sheriff's chaplain came to me last 
night about twelve of the clock, to bring me, as he 
called it, the fatal message of death, it pleased the 
Lord to bring that scripture to my mind in the 3d of 
Zechariah, to intimate to me, that he was now taking 
away my filthy garments, causing my iniquities to 
pass from me, with intention to give me change of 
rayment, and that my mortal should put on immor- 
tality. 



1662.] THE SCAFFOLD. 539 

" ' I suppose you may wonder when I shall tell you 
that I am not brought hither according to any 
known Law of the Land. It is true I have been 
before a court of justice (and am now going to ap- 
pear before a greater Tribunal, where I am to give 
an account of all my actions) ; under their sentence 
I stand here at this time. When I was before them, 
I could not have the liberty and privilege of an Eng- 
lishman, the grounds, reasons, and causes of the act- 
ings I was charged with duly considered ; I therefore 
desired the Judges that they would set their seals to 
my Bill of Exceptions ; I pressed hard for it again 
and again, as the right of myself and every free-born 
Englishman by the Law of the Land, but was finally 
denyed it ' — 

" Here Sir John Robinson (lieutenant of the Tower) 
interrupted him, saying, ' Sir, you must not go on 
thus,' and (in a furious manner, generally observed 
even to the dissatisfaction of some of their own at- 
tendants) said that he railed against the Judges, and 
that it was a lye, and I am here, says he, to testify 
that it is false. 

"Sir Henry Vane replied: 

"'God will judge between me and you in this mat- 
ter. I speak but matter of fact, and cannot you hear 
that? 'T is evident the Judges have refused to sign 
my Bill of Exceptions ' — Then the trumpets were 
ordered to sound or murre in his face, with a con- 
temptible noise, to hinder his being heard. At which 
Sir Henry (lifting up his hand, and then laying it on 
his breast) said, ' What mean you, Gentlemen ? Is 
this your usage of me ? Did you use all the rest so ? 



54-0 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1662. 

I had even done, as to that, could you have been 
patient, but seeing you cannot bear it, I shall only 
say this, That whereas the Judges have refused to 
seal that with their hands that they have done, 
I am come to seal that with my blood that I have 
done. Therefore leaving this matter, which I per- 
ceive will not be borne, I judge it meet to give you 
some account of my life. 

" ' I might tell you I was born a gentleman, had the 
education, temper, and spirit of a gentleman, as well 
as others, being (in my youthful days) inclined to the 
vanities of this world and to that which they call 
Goodfellowship, judging it to be the only means of 
accomplishing a gentleman. But about the 14th or 
15th year of my age (which is about 34 or 35 years 
since) God was pleased to lay the foundation, or 
ground-work, of Repentance in me, for the bringing 
me home to myself, by his wonderful, rich, and free 
grace, revealing his Son in me, that by the knowl- 
edge of " The only true God, and Jesus Christ whom 
he hath sent," I might (even whilst here in the body) 
be made partaker of eternal life in the first fruits 
of it. 

" ' When my conscience was thus awakened, I found 
my former course to be disloyalty to God, profane- 
ness, and a way of sin and death, which I did with 
tears and bitterness bewail, as I had cause to do. 
Since that foundation of repentance laid in me, 
through grace I have been kept stedfast, desiring to 
walk in all good conscience towards God and towards 
men, according to the best light, and understanding 
God gave me. For this I was willing to turn my 



i662.] THE SCAFFOLD. 54 1 

back upon my estate, expose myself to hazards in 
foreign parts ; yea, nothing seemed difficult to me, 
so I might preserve faith and a good conscience, 
which I prefer before all things ; and do earnestly 
persuade all people rather to suffer the highest con- 
tradictions from men, than disobey God, by contra- 
dicting the light of their own conscience. 

" ' In all respects, where I have concerned and en- 
gaged, as to the public, my design hath been to ac- 
complish good things for these nations.' Then (lift- 
ing up his eyes, and spreading his hands) he said, ' I do 
here appeal to the great God of Heaven, and all this 
assembly, or any other persons, to shew wherein I 
have defiled my hands with any man's blood or estate, 
or that I have sought myself in any public capacity 
or place I have been in. The Cause was three times 
stated. First, In the Remonstrance of the House of 
Commons. Secondly, In the Covenant, the Solemn 
League and Covenant ' — 

" Upon this the trumpets sounded, the Sheriff 
catched at the Paper in his hand ; and Sir John Rob- 
inson, who at first acknowledged that he had nothing 
to do there, wishing the Sheriff to see to it, yet found 
himself something to do now, furiously calling for the 
writers books, 1 and saying, ' He treats of Rebellion, 
and you write it.' Hereupon six Note-Books were 
delivered up. The Prisoner was very patient and 
composed under all these injuries, and soundings of 
the trumpets several times in his face, only saying, 
It was hard he might not be suffered to speak ; but, 

1 Several of Vane's friends were taking notes of his words. 



542 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1662. 

says he, ' My usage from man is no harder than was 
my Lord and Master's ; and all that will live his life 
this day, must expect hard dealing from the worldly 
spirit ' — 

" The trumpets sounded again, to hinder his being 
heard, then again Robinson, and two or three others, 
endeavored to snatch the Paper out of Sir Henry's 
hand ; but he kept it for a while, now and then read- 
ing part of it; afterwards, tearing it in pieces, he 
delivered it to a friend behind him, who w r as pres- 
ently forced to deliver it to the Sheriff. Then they 
put their hands into his pockets for papers (as was 
pretended) which bred great confusion and dissatis- 
faction to the spectators, seeing a prisoner so strangely 
handled in his dying words. 

" The Prisoner expecting beforehand the disorder 
aforementioned, writ the main substance of what he 
intended to speak on the Scaffold, the true copy 
whereof was by the Prisoner carefully committed to 
a safe hand before he came to the scaffold." 

Vane's address, thus roughly broken off, appears 
not to have been resumed. The notes prepared 
beforehand, " committed to a safe hand," are given 
in full by the reporter. They breathe throughout 
the spirit of piety and courage : the most interesting 
passages are those in which he refers to events in 
his past career. He declares that without seeking 
of his own, he became a member of the Long Par- 
liament, and entered upon a public career, — that 
by steps he became convinced that the cause of the 
Houses was the cause of God. He is nowhere more 



\662.-] THE SCAFFOLD. 543 

earnest than in his allusion to the part he had borne 
in the negotiation and carrying out of the Solemn 
League and Covenant. He felt keenly the obloquy 
to which he had been exposed in consequence of it, 
and asserted with the greatest solemnity his recti- 
tude of purpose in words which have been already 
quoted. 1 The speech is throughout free from fanati- 
cism, except at the conclusion, where a dream of the 
Fifth Monarchy drifts athwart the thought, with a 
picturesque effect. Who would have had it other- 
wise ? One is glad that the great soul could comfort 
itself with a hope so glorious. 

" I shall not desire in this place to take much time, 
but only, as my last words, leave this with you. 
That as the present storm we now lie under, and 
the dark clouds that yet hang over the reformed 
churches of Christ, (which are coming thicker and 
thicker for a season) were not unforeseen by me for 
many years past (as some writings of mine declare) : 
So the coming of Christ in these clouds, in order to 
a speedy and sudden revival of his cause, and spread- 
ing his kingdom over the face of the whole earth, is 
most clear to the eye of my faith, even that in which 
I die, whereby the kingdoms of this world shall be- 
come the kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ. 
Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus." 

Though he was not suffered to speak, he was suf- 
fered to pray without interruption, which he did at 
great length, uttering this among his petitions : — 

" Thy servant, that is now falling asleep, doth 
heartily desire of thee, that thou wouldst forgive his 
enemies, and not lay this sin to their charge." 

1 See pp. 185, 186. 



544 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1662. 

" I bless the Lord," he said, as he knelt at the 
block, " who hath accounted me worthy to suffer for 
his name. Blessed be the Lord, that I have kept a 
conscience void of offence to this day. I bless the 
Lord, that I have not deserted the righteous cause 
for which I suffer." 

" Father, glorify thy servant in the sight of man 
that he may glorify thee in the discharge of his duty 
to thee and to his country." 

One feels that a thought of his old comrades, the 
great strivers for freedom, with whom he had gone 
shoulder to shoulder, must have passed through his 
mind. Some, like Fairfax, forgetting their former 
enthusiasm, at peace with the Stuart, enjoyed tranquil 
ease. Lambert had been brought to trial at the same 
time with himself, but having made humble submis- 
sion, was to cultivate flowers and work embroidery 
for twenty years to come. The heads of Cromwell 
and Bradshaw looked ghastly from their poles upon 
the north gable of Westminster Hall. Blake and Ire- 
ton had fallen before the cause was hopeless, but their 
bodies had been flung into dishonored graves. Pym 
and Hampden, dying in the morning of the strife, had 
been spared the burden and heat of the long day. 
Scott and Harrison had been torn limb from limb. 
Algernon Sidney lived and was faithful, — a victim 
destined for a later clay. Not far off, too, in Jewin 
Street, Aldersgate, the blind Milton still lived, and 
must have paused, one thinks, in the dictating of 
Paradise Lost, heavy-hearted in the death-hour of the 
man, once his friend, whose praise he had sung in a 
day of triumph. Did Vane have in mind his old 



i662.] THE SCAFFOLD. 545 

yoke-fellows of the Honest Party, or was the supreme 
moment given to things above this world ? There is 
a tradition that he spoke once more. As his neck 
lay across the block, the headsman inquired, " Shall 
you raise your head again ? " " Not till the final resur- 
rection," was the reply. Another moment — and it 
was done. 

. Some disciple, not present, wrote soon after to one 
who attended Vane upon the scaffold a curious let- 
ter, preserved by Sikes, the sentences of which be- 
come solemnly lyrical like those of the Canticles or 
a triumphal psalm, as the love of the fanatical en- 
thusiast pours itself out. 

" Didst thou stand forth by my worthy friend and 
bear him company ? Did thy soul suffer with him 
and rejoice with him, riding in his chariot of triumph, 
to the block, to the axe, to the crown, to the banner, 
to the bed and ivory throne of the Lord God, thy 
Redeemer? 

" Were not his eyes like the pure dove's, fixed 
upon his mate, single and clear ? Was not his breast- 
plate strong like steel ? Did the arrows, the sharp 
trials and cruel mockeries pierce it ? Did not his 
shield cover him like the targets of Solomon ? Was 
it not beaten gold ? When it was tried did it yield 
to the tempter? O precious faith! Tell me, my 
friend, how did he wield his glittering flaming 
sword ? 

" O mighty man of valor ! Thou champion for the 
Lord and his host, when they were defied ! How 



546 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. [1662. 

hast thou spoiled them ! The Goliath is trodden 
under foot. The whole army of the Philistines fly." 

After two centuries and a quarter, these raptures 
of the Fifth Monarchist have an air of frenzy, though 
pervaded, who will deny it? by a certain wild and 
melancholy beauty. To the world in general of 
Vane's time, as his career ended thus upon Tower 
Hill, failure never seemed more complete. Not so : 
his cause was not lost, but only postponed. In a 
hundred years America made real his noble ideal ; 
and to-day on far continents and distant isles of the 
sea, noble states are shaping themselves according to 
the ideas of that band of heroes amons: whom he 
stood a chief. So, too, his beloved England steadily 
transforms herself into the shape of that Common- 
wealth for which he strove and died, "for the last 
two hundred years having done little more than carry 
out in a slow and tentative way, but very surely, the 
programme laid down by Vane and his friends at 
the end of the Civil War." 1 

1 John Richard Green ; see p. op. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

WHY THE STORY OF VANE IS TIMELY AT THE PRESENT 

HOUR. 

At the time of the centennial anniversary of the 
early events of the American Revolution, the writer 
remembers to have seen a certain patriotic fellow-cit- 
izen of his own greatly taken back by what, to most 
Americans perhaps, would seem a very profane sug- 
gestion. " One hundred years ago," said the patriot, 
" my great-grandfather stood among the ' embattled 
farmers ' at Concord Bridge, and there fired one of 
the first shots in resistance to British aggression." 
As he stroked his chin in complacent certainty that 
his listeners must necessarily admire a man whose 
ancestor had been so heroic — " Well," said an old 
man of the group, " was it worth while ? Was the 
American Revolution worth while? Would it not 
have been better if the British Empire had remained 
undivided ? " The company stood aghast at the au- 
dacity of the man who at the very time when the air 
was full of the flap of the great spread eagle dared 
without fear of his beak to ask whether the separa- 
tion of America from England were worth while. 

Let us inquire for a moment whether there is any 
reason in such a question. The American Revolu- 



54-8 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. 

tion began at the time of the Stamp Act, in 1764, 
with the declaration of the colonists that they would 
not be taxed unless they could be represented in the 
Legislative Body that imposed the tax. 

Excellent friends of America in England, and sev- 
eral of the leading patriots among the colonists, be- 
lieved it quite feasible that representatives should be 
sent from this side of the water to the British Par- 
liament, and regarded this as the best way to put an 
end to the discontent. James Otis, who until he be- 
came insane in 1770 was the most conspicuous leader 
of the Northern colonies, never entertained a wish 
for independence, felt that it would be a calamity to 
be separated from the mother-country, and that all 
grievances might easily be adjusted, if only certain 
deputies from the colonies might sit at Westminster. 
" Remember, Britons," 1 he exclaims in an impas- 
sioned address before madness fell upon him, " when 
you shall be taxed without your consent, and tried 
without a jury, and have an army quartered in pri- 
vate families, you will have little to hope or fear. . . . 
I find it generally much disliked in the colonies and 
thought impracticable, an American representation 
in Parliament. I would humbly ask if there be really 
and naturally any greater absurdity in the plan than 
in a Welsh and Scotch representation. An Ameri- 
can representation, in my sense of the terms and as I 
ever used them, implies a thorough beneficial union 
of these colonies to the realm or mother-country, so 
that all parts of the empire may be compacted and 
consolidated, the constitution flourish with new vigor, 

1 Tudor, Life of Otis, 191 etc. 



WHY THE STORY OF VANE IS TIMELY. 549 

and the national strength, power, and importance, 
shine with far greater splendor than hath ever yet 
been seen by the sons of men. An American repre- 
sentation implies every real advantage to the subject 
abroad as well as at home. . . . Every region, na- 
tion, and people, must to all real intents and pur- 
poses, be united, knit, and worked into the very bones 
and blood of the original system, as fast as subdued, 
settled, or allied." 

James Otis was far enough from standing alone 
among Americans. More illustrious still, Benjamin 
Franklin was opposed to independence almost to the 
moment of the Declaration, making, not exultingly 
but quite ruefully, his famous joke at that time : 
" Now, gentlemen, we must all hang together or we 
shall all hang separately." 1 His favorite plan had 
been to keep together the British empire, which he 
compared to a handsome China bowl, ruined if a 
piece were broken out of it. With prophetic soul he 
foresaw the time when a vast population would hold 
the valley of the Mississippi and the lands farther 
westward, giving his forecast at a day when few men, 
even in thought, had crossed the Alleghanies. He 
believed the time was not far off, when, if the British 
empire could only be kept together, the portion of it 
contained in America would preponderate in impor- 
tance, that the seat of government would be trans- 
ferred, and America become principal while England 
became subordinate. 

1 Tudor's Otis, p. 391. Lecky, Com. of Correspond., May 15, 

Hist, of the XVIII Century, vol. 1771 : to Joh. Winthrop, July 25, 

iii. p. 349 etc. See also Franklin's 1773: to Jos. Galloway, Feb. 25, 

Works, vol. iv. p. 41. Franklin to 1775: to Francis Maseres, June 

his son, Nov. 25, 1767: to Mass. 26, 1785, etc., etc. 



550 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. 

American statesmen were not alone in favoring a 
solution of the quarrel by an American representa- 
tion in Parliament. Grenville, 1 the minister who 
imposed the Stamp Act, was disposed to think it a 
wise measure. Adam Smith, in so many ways the 
most far-seeing Englishman of his time, in the 
"Wealth of Nations" 2 favored strongly the idea. 
While admitting the difficulties, he contended they 
were not insurmountable. His scheme was that the 
number of representatives should be proportioned to 
the produce of American taxation. Following in the 
thought of Franklin, he maintained that it was far 
from unlikely that in less than a century the produce 
of American taxation would exceed that of Britain, 
and that the seat of empire would then be trans- 
ferred to America. A strong disposition to concede 
the seats soon came to pass among men of influence 
in England. Meantime, however, in America a class 
of leaders had gained influence, of whom Samuel 
Adams was the most conspicuous figure, who be- 
lieved a fair American representation in Parliament 
was quite impracticable, and would hear of nothing 
but independence. 

"Some splendid visions arise in the mind, while 
contemplating such a grand representative dominion 
as this would have been." 3 Our age is noteworthy 
through its tendency to unification. Through Ca- 
vour disintegrated Italy has come together into a 
great and powerful kingdom, under the headship of 

1 Hutchinson, Hist, of Mass. 2 Wealth of Nations, ii. 103, 
Bay, vol. iii. p. 112. Lecky, vol. 104, Hartford ed. 1804. 
iii. p. 349. 3 Tudor, Life of Otis, 199. 



WHY THE STORY OF VANE IS TIMELY. 55 1 

the able House of Savoy. Still more memorably, 
Germany has been redeemed from the granulation 
which for so many ages has made her a mere rope 
of sand, her petty principalities and kingdoms be- 
coming plaited at length into a nation magnificent 
in size, power, and ability. Such unification can be 
regarded as only advantageous, whether we look to- 
ward the general welfare of the human race, or to the 
internal benefits brought by such consolidation to 
the powers themselves. The practical annihilation 
of space and time, as man gains dominion over the 
world of matter, makes it possible that states should 
be immense in size as never before. The ends of 
the earth talk together almost without shouting ; the 
man of to-day moves from place to place more easily 
and speedily than the rider of the enchanted horse 
or the owner of the magic carpet in the Arabian 
Nights. Modern political unification is a step to- 
ward making real the brotherhood of the human 
race, the coming together of mankind into one har- 
monious family, a consummation to which the benev- 
olent have always looked forward. 1 

Moreover, by such political unification the individ- 
ual man is enlarged and lifted up. There is some- 
thing in the remark of Froude : 2 " The dimension 
and value of any single man depend upon the body 
of which he is a member. ... A citizen of an impe- 
rial power expands to the scope and fulness of the 
larger organism, — the grander the organization, the 
larger and more important the unit that knows he 

1 See the author's Life of Samuel Adams, p. 65. 

2 Oceana, pp. 355, 356. 



552 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. 

belongs to it. His thoughts are wider, his interests 
less selfish, his ambitions ampler and nobler. . . . 
Behind each American citizen America is standing, 
and he knows it, — is the man that he is because he 
knows it. ... A great nation makes great men ; a 
small nation makes little men." 

Who can question that in the case of the individual 
citizen whose political atmosphere is that of a mighty 
state, there is a largeness of view, a magnanimity of 
spirit, a sense of dignity, an obliteration of small pre- 
judices, an altogether nobler set of ideas, than are 
possible to the citizen of a contracted land ! Really, 
in the highest view, any limitation of the sympathies 
which prevents a thorough, generous going out of 
the heart toward the whole human race, is to be re- 
gretted. The time is to be longed and labored for 
when patriotism shall become merged into a cosmo- 
politan humanity. The man who can call sixty mil- 
lion fellow-citizens is nearer that magnificent breadth 
of love, than he whose country is a narrow patch. 
What if a man could call one hundred million fel- 
low-citizens? Was the American Revolution worth 
while ? Would not the welfare of the English-speak- 
ing race, of the world in general, have been better 
served if the British empire had remained undivided ? 
But for the opposition of America, George III and 
his ministers might have been brought to accord an 
American representation in Parliament. After the 
sharp fighting, Lord North stood ready to concede 
every essential point in dispute. England fairly went 
down upon her knees in her efforts to retain us. 
Anything to keep the empire unbroken ! " In vain," 



WHY THE STORY OF VANE IS TIMELY. 553 

says May, " the British Parliament humbling itself 
before its rebellions subjects, repealed the American 
tea-duty, and renounced its claims to the imperial 
taxation. In vain were Parliamentary commissioners 
empowered to suspend the acts of which the colo- 
nists complained, — to concede every demand but 
independence, and almost to sue for peace." l Noth- 
ing, however, would do ; America declared it was too 
late, and preferred to take her stand by herself. 

Alone, among all the great English-speaking de- 
pendencies of England, America has preferred to 
stand by herself. All the rest have remained, and 
been glad and proud to remain, attached to the 
mother-land. At the same time they have liberty. 
Let us glance for a moment at these faithful depen- 
dencies, which to-day are even freer in their forms of 
government than the United States. Throughout the 
British empire what is called " responsible govern- 
ment " prevails. Power is in the hands of a ministry, 
taken from, and reflecting the will of the dominant 
party among the People. If the party ceases to be in- a 
majority, the ministry must at once resign, giving way 
to successors from the new party that comes upper- 
most. So we find it in Canada, which is to-day prac- 
tically free, at the same time deriving much prestige, 
indeed substantial benefit, from her connection with 
the mother-land. In Cape Colony a similar constitu- 
tion is established ; so too in New Zealand. In the 
latter noble country, three closely contiguous islands 
form a territory nearly as large as Italy, which has 
been settled by men of the best strain of English 

1 Constitutional Hist, of England, ii. 524. 



554 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. 

blood. The land is divided into eight great provinces, 
each with its own chief magistrate and legislature 
elected by a suffrage almost universal, each in its own 
affairs self-ruling, like a state of the American Union. 
The eight together form a confederation, in which, 
whatever slight reservation of power to the home 
government may have been made, the land is in all 
substantial respects free. 

But of all the present dependencies of England, no 
one is so interesting as Australia. There is perhaps 
no land in the world in which democratic freedom 
has made such progress as here. In the United 
States Constitution, the existence of an Upper House, 
the Senate, has always been regarded as an aristo- 
cratic feature, but a most necessary one. Timely 
delays in legislation when the delegates direct from 
the people incline to be over-hasty, cautious reviews 
of public measures, resistance to the violence of fac- 
tion and the tyranny of the majority, the means of ju- 
dicious compromise, — these are advantages claimed 
to flow from an Upper House, a necessary check and 
balance in a representative government. 1 Australia, 
however, has seen fit to cast all this aside : there is 
no Upper House ; the majority of a single chamber 
is absolute. In 1850, when New South Wales was 
divided into two colonies, one taking the name of 
Victoria, the constitution was revised ; the feature, 
however, of the single chamber was retained in both. 
It belongs, too, to the schemes fixed upon for the 
later colonies, South Australia, Western Australia, 
Tasmania, and Queensland. Though a portion of 
the legislatures is nominated by the crown-appointed 

1 May, ii. 536. 



WHY THE STORY OF VANE IS TIMELY. 555 

Governor, the great majority are elected by a suffrage 
practically free ; responsible government is fully 
established, the executive changing according to the 
will of the majority, as a vane responds to the breeze 
which for the time may blow. Whatever slight 
checks upon entire self-government may exist, they 
are never enforced. These six great colonies, with a 
population increasing fast in the millions, with cities 
of 500,000 souls, with universities perhaps equal to 
the best in Europe, and all the appliances of the high- 
est civilization, possess a degree of democratic free- 
dom from which even an American shrinks; yet 
with it all they are proud and happy to be constitu- 
ents of the mighty British empire rather than inde- 
pendent ; and Britain in turn, proud of the children, 
throws round them the protection of her Army and 
Navy without counting the heavy cost. 

" Thus the most considerable dependencies of the 
British crown have advanced until an ancient mon- 
archy has become the parent of democratic Republics 
in all parts of the globe. The Constitution of the 
United States is scarcely so democratic as that of 
Canada or Australia. The President's fixed tenure 
of office and large executive powers, the independent 
position and authority of the Senate and the control 
of the Supreme Court, are checks upon the democ- 
racy of Congress. In these colonies the nominees of 
a majority of the democratic assembly, for the time 
being, are absolute masters of the colonial govern- 
ment. . . . The tie which binds them [the colonies] 
to her [the mother-land] is one of sentiment rather 
than authority. . . . Political dominion has been 



556 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. 

virtually renounced. In short, their dependence has 
become little more than nominal." 1 

Was the American Revolution worth while, or 
would it have been better for America to remain and 
become the grandest member of the fraternity ? 

Instead of beholding one magnificent empire, at 
peace in all its members, numbering more than 
100,000,000, comprehending the entire great family 
that use the English speech, all working harmoni- 
ously together to compass a civilization reaching 
always higher and higher, we have the unlovely spec- 
tacle of two sharply distinguished, ever jarring nation- 
alities, between whom there has twice been fierce 
and bloody war, between whom jealousies, rivalries, 
grievances are ever recurring, which have brought us 
a dozen times to the brink of war, — a spectacle of 
discordance contrary to the unifying spirit of the 
age. 

Such a presentment, however, of arguments favor- 
ing the view that the American Revolution was not 
worth while is only upon the surface plausible. That 
great movement was not a mistake. Samuel Adams 
who conceived it, and Washington who carried it 
through, deserve respect and blessing, and from Eng- 
lishmen as well as Americans. As regards America 
herself, independence was undoubtedly necessary to 
any adequate development. In the middle of the 
eighteenth century, but for help from England, 
America would in all probability have fallen to 
France. That danger surmounted, a smiting off of 
all trammels was necessary in order that growth 
should not be dwarfed and one-sided. 

1 May, ii. 538. 



WHY THE STORY OF VANE IS TIMELY. 557 

Without stopping to consider a proposition so ob- 
vious as that America herself was helped by becom- 
ing independent, let us inquire for a moment as to 
the effect of the American revolt elsewhere than at 
home. Charles James Fox is said to have exclaimed 
once : " The resistance of the Americans to the 
oppression of the mother-country has undoubtedly 
preserved the liberties of mankind." If such a decla- 
ration appears too sweeping, the value of the Amer- 
ican revolt as regards the British empire, at any rate, 
can scarcely be exaggerated. How has it come to 
pass that the untrammelled freedom to-day allowed to , 
the dependencies of England exists ? It has come to 
pass directly from the circumstance that the mother- 
country learned wisdom from her fiery experience 
with America. Her eyes were opened to what was 
and what was not possible, and it is directly as a con- 
sequence of the American struggle that she has at 
length established it as a principle that colonies are 
to be left to themselves. America by conquering 
secured not only her own freedom, but that of her 
fellow-dependencies, those then existing and those 
afterward to be established. 

Perhaps still more than this can be said : did not 
the resistance of America save England herself? 
Buckle, in his History of Civilization, speaking of 
the dangers to England, one hundred years ago, 
through the encroachments of royal and aristocratic 
power, says : x " The danger was so imminent as to 
make the ablest defenders of popular liberty believe 
that everything was at stake, and that if the Ameri- 

1 Vol. i. 345, Am. ed. 



558 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. 

cans were vanquished the next step would be to at- 
tack the liberties of England, and endeavor to extend 
to the mother-country the same arbitrary govern- 
ment which by that time would have been established 
in the colonies. . . . The danger was far more seri- 
ous than men are now inclined to believe. During 
many years the authority of the Crown continued to 
increase until it reached a height of which no ex- 
ample had been seen in England for several gen- 
erations. . . . There is no doubt, I think that the 
American War was a great crisis in the history of 
England, and that if the colonists had been defeated, 
our liberties for a time would have been in consider- 
able jeopardy. From that risk we were saved by the 
Americans, who with heroic spirit resisted the royal 
armies." 

A dark picture indeed can be drawn of the condi- 
tion in which lay the England of George III. In 
primeval times there had existed a large amount of 
popular liberty. All the free inhabitants had a voice 
in the rule, the people assembling in great multi- 
tudes for the transaction of public business. In no 
other country, so late as the fifteenth century, were 
the independent yeomen, the small landed proprie- 
tors, so numerous as in England ; all such were taxed, 
and all such took part energetically in the work of 
self-government, in the ways transmitted to them 
from their old Teutonic fathers, not delegating their 
authority to others, but acting for themselves in 
every important point. But times grew worse. The 
number of independent yeomen steadily decreased : 
the rich and influential encroached more and more 



WHY THE STORY OF VANE IS TIMELY. 559 

upon the rights of the People : the Sovereigns, who 
in the primitive Teutonic idea were the ministers of 
the People, elected by their suffrages to execute their 
will, sought to become absolute masters. The arbi- 
trary Tudors arrogated to themselves authority which 
the Stuarts in their turn sought to make perfect des- 
potism. In the times of Cromwell and William III, 
a check was interposed : it was, however, only a 
check, not a reform. Up to the era of George III 
there had been no restoration of liberty to the People. 
Parliament, so far from being derived from them, de- 
pended upon the King and the aristocracy, and had 
become very corrupt ; the towns and villages through- 
out England were sometimes practically owned by 
great nobles or men of wealth, sometimes in the 
hands of close corporations who had seized on all 
power, allowing to the individual citizen not the 
smallest voice in public management. 1 

Coeval with the agitations produced by the on- 
coming American Revolution came to Englishmen 
the recognition of their abasement and the desire 
for reform. " No taxation without representation," 
cried the American patriots, and in a year or two 
the cry became, " No government at all except by a 
legislature in which our representatives sit." Even 
while England fought us her eyes became opened. 
Her sense of justice became convinced that the colo- 
nists had been right. She began to look at home, at 
her own corrupt Parliament and her unrepresented 
millions. " Virtual representation — that they have," 
she tried to say. " They cast no votes, but those who 

1 May, i. ch. vi., and ii. ch. xv. 



56o YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. 

do, act for them and protect them." England saw at 
last that it was all a subterfuge ; the better scholar- 
ship of the modern time came in to help, making 
plain to all the old Teutonic principles of freedom 
which had been so long overlaid. It was remem- 
bered at last how once each freeman had a vote, how 
Kings and Nobles were ministers, not masters, how 
government had been of the People, by the People, 
and for the People. The cry for reform grew 
stronger. The fight was hard through the first 
quarter of the present century, the Crown, the 
Nobles, the Established Church, throwing their 
weight heavily against. Among the champions, the 
name of Lord John Russell is honorably prominent; 
with him as leader, was passed at length the great 
Reform Bill of 1832, which with its subsequent amend- 
ments has made England practically free again. 

Was the American Revolution worth while ? 
Aside from all gains to America herself, the revolt 
brought it about that the other great states that have 
preferred to remain dependent can do so, with no 
sacrifice of liberty. The revolt of America was per- 
haps the salvation of England herself. 

It will, however, be a sad day for America if her 
people ever allow themselves to be so far swayed by 
ancient prejudice or the foreign influences which 
have been poured in so copiously as to forget that 
their country is in origin English, that her institu- 
tions are the bequest of bygone English generations, 
and that the land will be past praying for if she for- 
gets the mother from whom she drew her life. To 



WHY THE STORY OF VANE IS TIMELY. 56 1 

such an extent is America overswept, stunned on 
the one hand by the Irish cry, weighted in another 
direction by inert millions just released from slavery, 
threatened in still another by an Asiatic inundation, 
penetrated through and through with a Teutonic in- 
flux, which, welcome though it is, and closely allied 
though it is, cannot undertake her free life without a 
process of assimilation — to such an extent is America 
overswept that it is natural for thoughtful men of the 
original stock to feel somewhat insecure, and to ask 
whether it may not some day be desirable and pos- 
sible to brace themselves by entering into some closer 
league with those who, in spite of superficial differ- 
ences, are substantially one with themselves. 

Said Lowell once : " I remember a good many 
years ago M. Guizot asked me how long I thought 
the American Republic was going to last. Said I : 
' M. Guizot, it will last just so long as the traditions 
of the men of English descent who founded it are 
dominant there.' And he assented. And that is my 
firm faith." 1 

At the Colonial Exhibition at London of 1886, an 
exhibition of products from the dependencies of the 
British empire, a strong impression was conveyed to 
every visitor of the vast extent of that empire, and 
its enormous resources. But to the American, the 
thought that beyond all others suggested itself was 
that, so far as the English-speaking dependencies 
went, everything plainly told of a life identical with 
that which we lead ourselves. Such cloth ins: we also 
wear, such food we eat, — we live in such houses, we 

1 At Chicago, Feb. 22, 1887. 



562 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. 

travel in such coaches. Bed and chair, boat and 
book, with precisely such appliances do we also sleep 
and sit, sail and read. A group of men pausing 
before some attractive object, might easily fall into 
conversation. A Londoner would be one ; men from 
Auckland, Cape Town, Melbourne, and Montreal, 
would be others ; still another, the American. To 
the latter, these chance companions looked and acted 
scarcely less like fellow-countrymen than his next- 
door neighbors. Nor was the resemblance merely 
external. If the talk went at all below the surface, 
the American found that the mind of the foreigner 
had been educated by the same methods, fed on the 
same literature, nurtured in the same religious faith, 
as his own ; and that in the polity which the foreigner, 
as a citizen, helped to administer, the same popular 
government prevails as that of which Americans 
boast. Why should these men be foreigners ? was a 
natural thought. Why not fellow-citizens ? In blood, 
faith, tongue, and political institutions we are one. 
Why should we be fenced apart in isolated groups ? 
For one point of difference, there are ten points of 
agreement. 

By a rough estimate, one hundred and ten million 
people in the world call English their mother-tongue, 
in institutions, blood, and language, for the most 
part, derived from the German woods. Until one 
hundred years ago, the English-speaking race was 
confined within one nationality. Then, in conse- 
quence of a bad colonial policy, a split took place, 
so that to-day the world has two English-speaking 
divisions of about equal strength, the British empire 



WHY THE STORY OF VANE IS TIMELY. 563 

and the United States of America. A large propor- 
tion of Englishmen, one hundred years ago, objected 
to the policy which alienated America ; it was soon 
bitterly repented of by the men in power, and at 
length utterly abandoned. The institutions set up 
by America differed, as Sir Henry Maine has power- 
fully shown, 1 only in superficial ways from those of 
England. The President of the United States has, 
under the Constitution, the powers of an English 
King of the eighteenth century — of George III in 
fact ; the only differences lie here, that the President 
is elected, instead of being born to wield them, and 
wields them for a short term of years, instead of 
for life. The House of Representatives differs not 
greatly from the House of Commons in its powers 
and functions, and as regards the manner in which 
members are returned. In respect to the Senate and 
Supreme Court, the American departure from Eng- 
lish ways is wider. The Senate, however, has its 
analogue, though not its counterpart, in the House of 
Lords; and the Supreme Court is based upon and 
ruled by traditions of English jurisprudence. 2 If we 
look at local self-government, the apparatus of town- 
ship and county, the country over, is based upon 
English traditions, the departure being slighter than 
in the case of the more comprehensive institutions. 
Moreover, as the difference in politics was slight at 
the outset, circumstances have since so wrought, that 
not greater difference but greater similarity exists 
now between child and mother-land. England of 

1 Popular Government, ch. "American Constitution." 

2 See p. 444, note. 



564 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. 

herself has tended toward freedom, and this tendency, 
promoted by a powerful and constantly increasing 
reaction from America, has brought it about that at 
the present hour the people of England, as repre- 
sented in the Commons, have really more power than 
the people of the United States ; while in the great 
dependencies of England, as we have seen, the re- 
semblance in institutions is still more close. As 
methods for abridging distance are constantly bring- 
ing the world more closely together, it must be the 
case that the world will see more and more how 
much better it is for nations to be mutually bound 
together than proudly apart. It can scarcely be 
doubted that the different bodies of the English- 
speaking race, so substantially one to-day in blood, 
tongue, and institutions, will some time and in some 
way blend. The townships make up the county, 
the counties the States, the States the United States. 
What is to hinder a further extension of the federal 
principle, so that at length we may have a vaster 
United States, whose members shall be, as empire 
state, America, then the mother, England, and lastly 
the great English dependencies, so populous and 
thoroughly developed that they may fitly stand coor- 
dinate ? It cannot be said that this is an unreason- 
able or Utopian anticipation. Dependence was right 
in its day : but for English help, colonial America 
would have become a province of France. Indepen- 
dence was and is right. It was well for us, and for 
Britain too, that we were split apart. Washington, 
as the main agent in the separation, is justly the most 
venerated name in our history. But Inter-dependence, 



WHY THE STORY OF VANE IS TIMELY. 565 

too, will in its clay be right; and greater than Wash- 
ington will be that statesman of the future who shall 
reconstitute the family-bond, conciliate the members 
into an equal brotherhood, found the vaster union 
which must be the next great step toward the uni- 
versal fraternity of man, when patriotism can be 
merged into a love that can take in all humanity. 

Such suggestions as have just been made are per- 
haps scarcely likely to be well received either by 
Englishmen or Americans. We are sharply sun- 
dered. If England can turn a penny at America's 
expense, she is nothing loth to do it. If America 
can supplant England in the good-will of a valued 
customer, the mother-land is certain to be shouldered 
out with little ceremony. Fifty years after the close 
of the American Revolution, De Tocqueville wrote : 
" It is impossible to imagine a hatred more venomous 
than that of the Americans asrainst the English." ' 
A hundred years have now passed, but to many 
Americans to-day the name British, more than any 
other, is one of contempt and dislike. It is a disagree- 
able survival of the revolutionary struggle, reinforced 
in later years by Irish prejudice, which for years to 
come, no doubt, will affect our relations with those 
who speak the same tongue with ourselves, and are 
really flesh of our flesh. Inveterate prejudices exist 
on both sides, a narrow national feeling exists on 
both sides, which is nothing but an expansion of 
selfishness. 

1 " II est impossible d'imaginer Anglais." Quoted by J. Bryce, 
une haine plus venemeuse que Johns Hopkins, Hist, and Polit. 
celle des Ame'ricains contre les Stud. 5th Series, No. ix. p. 50. 



566 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. 

But if the considerations thus presented are sound, 
if American freedom is British freedom at bottom, 
and if a closer drawing together of the great Eng- 
lish-speaking world so scattered in various homes 
into some kind of a federation is a thing to be de- 
sired and labored for, how suitable at present will 
be the effort to mitigate the inveterate prejudices 
which stand in the way of such a coming together, 
and to illustrate the identity, so often unrecognized, 
of the principles upon which rest the structures of 
British and American liberty ! 

How can a presentment in this spirit be made con- 
crete and vivid ? How better than by setting forth 
the career of some one great man, if such a one can 
be found, who was at once an Englishman and an 
American ? Such a figure there is, who may well at 
the present hour be brought forth from the obscurity 
which has fallen upon him — Sir Henry Vane the 
younger. We have seen him begin his public career 
in 1636 as a citizen of Massachusetts, where in the 
position of Governor he fought stoutly against the 
other colonial magnates for a free toleration of all re- 
ligious beliefs. Returned to England, we have seen 
him at the outset of the Long Parliament, the chief 
reliance of Pym in bringing Strafford to destruction. 
In 1643 he brought the Scots to help the sinking 
cause of the Parliament. As much to him as to 
Cromwell w r as due the victory of Marston Moor, per- 
haps also the victory of Naseby, successes which in 
the Civil War turned the scale against the Stuart 
despotism. He was the heart of the Rump and the 
Council of State when Cromwell smote Ireland and 



WHY THE STORY OF VANE IS TIMELY. 567 

won the fields of Dunbar and Worcester. He reor- 
ganized and administered the Navy when Van Tromp 
and De Ruyter were on the point of sweeping it 
from the seas, — standing back of Blake when Eng- 
land won the empire of the deep, as the elder Pitt 
stood back of Wolfe and the younger Pitt back of 
Nelson. First of men, we have seen him, in 1656, 
recommend the expedient of a Constitutional Con- 
vention, that the People, after the American fashion, 
might lay down for themselves the " fundamentals " 
of a proper polity. 

From the day when scarcely more than a boy he 
defended Anne Hutchinson in Massachusetts, to the 
day when yet in his full strength he serenely laid 
his head upon the block on Tower-hill by command 
of Charles II, he consecrated the whole force of ex- 
traordinary powers to the expounding and vindica- 
tion of what he held to be English freedom, over- 
laid by accretions which were in reality foreign to 
it. If the principles for which he lived and died are 
examined, it will be found that they are no less pre- 
cious to Americans than to Englishmen. " Govern- 
ment of the People, by the People, and for the Peo- 
ple," the famous sentence of Abraham Lincoln's 
Gettysburg address, was also the fundamental thought 
with young Sir Harry Vane. One by one England 
has adopted and is adopting the reforms which he 
proclaimed to be necessary in order that the state 
should rest upon the substructure fitted for it, — the 
extension of the suffrage, the transformation of the 
Upper House, the disestablishment of the Church, 
— the doing away with every privilege of faith and 



568 YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. 

class that stands in the path of toleration and fair 
equality, — the utter committing of power to the 
hands of the People assembled in their representa- 
tives in the great national Council. As in England 
and her dependencies the power of the People grows, 
a process which we see going forward without break, 
that noble Commonwealth becomes more and more 
manifest which Vane prematurely tried and died to 
bring to pass. For and in England he struggled, 
when America was scarcely in embryo, but no states- 
man more soundly American can be named than he. 
His American biographer, Upham, has well said : 
" His name is the most appropriate link to bind us 
to the land of our fathers. It presents more, per- 
haps, than any that could be mentioned, in one char- 
acter, those features and traits by which it is our 
pride to prove our lineage and descent from the Brit- 
ish Isles." 

"Vane, young in years, but in sage counsel old, 
Than whom a better senator ne'er held 
The helm." 

So wrote John Milton at the time when the fleets of 
Blake, equipped and marshalled by Vane's guiding 
genius, thundered for the Commonwealth. Thorough 
Englishman, thorough American, his mind possessed 
by no obsolete ideas, but with ideas so vital at the 
present moment, the figure of this half-forgotten mar- 
tyr of freedom can well be brought forward in the 
hour in which English-speaking men are beginning 
to feel, that 

" When love unites wide space divides in vain, 
And hands may clasp across the flowing main." 



INDEX. 



Agitators, representatives of the rank and 

file of the Army, 267-8. 
Agreement of the People, work of the Agita- 
tors, 277 ; abstract of, 278-S0. 
Agreement 0/ the People, the 2d one, Ireton's 

work, 319-21. 
Alfred, King, a popular reformer, 85. 
Allen, Adjutant, his account of the Army 

prayer-meeting in 164S, 287-292. 
America, its influence in forming Vane, 163 ; 

gives rise to Independency, 164, 166; the 

English foundations of, 560. 
Americanism, of the Ironsides, 277 etc. ; of 

the programme of the Commonwealth, 312 

etc. 
American England, 310. 
American Revolution, was it worth while? 

547 etc. 
Antinomian, see Mrs. Anne Hutchinson. 
Anthony a Wood, on Marten's wit, 190; his 

judgment of Vane, 484; on Stubbe, 490. 
Argyle, Marquis of, favors Solemn League 

and Covenant in 1643, 1S5 ; a friend of 

Vane, favors the New Model, 235, 238 ; 

heads Scotland against the Independents in 

1648, 323-4. 
Army, see Ironsides. 

Armyne, Sir William, commissioner in Scot- 
land in 1643, 173. 
Ascham, ambassador, murdered at Madrid, 

1649, 338. 

Ascue, naval commander, 334. 

Astley, Sir Jacob, his prayer at Edgehill, 154; 
commands King's centre at Naseby, 24s, 
248 ; captured by the Roundheads, 254-5. 

Australia, present position and free institu- 
tions of, 554-5. 

Bacon, Nathaniel, his Laws and Govern- 
ment of England, 404, note. 

Baillie, Scotch commissioner to England, in 
1641, describes in his Letters and Journals 
discord of Lords and Commons at Straf- 



ford's trial, 119; on Vane's testimony, 120; 
on John Cotton as the father of Indepen- 
dency, 167-8 ; on the passing of the Solemn 
League and Covenant, 175 etc.; a commis- 
sioner to England in 1643, 187 ; on discovery 
of Violett'splot, 195-6; troubled by Indepen- 
dency, 1644, 228 9 ; describes the progress 
of Independency, 1645, 261-2. 

B. llads, relating to Vane, 487-9. 

Baptists, as founders of Toleration, 170. 

Baxter, on the leadership of Vane in 1643, 191 ; 
on the origin of the Self-Denying Ordi- 
nance, 231 ; his judgment on Vane, 4S2-3. 

Bayne, Peter, on the character of old Sir 
Henry Vane, 126; on the Retired Mail's 
Meditations, 499. 

Bill of Portland, sea-fight off, 3S4 etc. 

Biographia Britannica, its judgment on Vane, 
4S4. 

Blackstone, on the non-existence of an Eng- 
lish Constitution, 435. 

Blake, Robert, Colonel and Admiral, in Parlia- 
ment, 1645, 256; made a General of the 
Fleet, 331 ; letter to, respecting Rupert, 338; 
defeats Rupert at sea, 36S ; action with 
Dutch off Dover, 1652, 371 ; directed by the 
Council of State, 372 ; wounded, 374 ; his 
character, 385 ; his training as a sailor, 386 ; 
his great fight with Van Tromp, 389 etc. ; 
awes Denmark, avenges the Vaudois peas- 
ants, awes Italy, 394 ; humbles the Barbary 
pirates, disciplines Spain, 395 ; his battle of 
Santa Cruz, 396 ; his death, 397 ; his alleged 
regret at the fall of the Rump, 415. 

Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, of Roger Wil- 
liams, 171. 

Blue Boar Inn, Cromwell and Ireton at, 1647, 
273-4- 

Boston, appearance of, in 1635, 19. 

" Boy," Rupert's dog at Marston Moor, 218. 
(Bradshaw, a leading Republican in 1649, 325 ; 
president of the Council of State, 328; his 
sense of the difficulties in 1650, 342 ; disci- 



5/0 



INDEX. 



plined by Cromwell, 1656, 449; in Richard's 

Parliament, 1659, 459. 
" Brederode," Van Tromp's flagship in 1653, 

3S8; her action with the "Triumph," 389; 

boarded and blown up, 393-4. 
Brentford, Earl of, a Royalist commander, 205. 
Brooke, Lord, interested in Connecticut, 40 ; 

a friend of the Separatists, 116; under the 

influence of Vane, 483. 
Brooke, Sir Basil, Catholic intriguer, 1644, 

194-5. 
Bryce, Professor James, on the Supreme Court 

of the United States, 444, note. 
Buckle, on the American Revolution as saving 

England, 557~S. 
Bulkeley, Rev. Peter, his high connections, 

21 ; a founder of Concord, 38. 
Bunyan, John, captured at Leicester, 1645, 2 4'- 
Burnet, Bishop, his judgment on Vane, 485. 
Burton's Diary, its testimony as to Vane in 

1659, 461. 

Canada, present position and institutions of, 
553- 

Cape Colony, present position and institutions 
of, 553- 

Capel, Lord, against Strafford in 1641, 115; 
executed as a Royalist, 1649, 330. 

Carisbrook Castle, prison of Charles f, 275 ; 
of Vane, description of, 452. 

Carlisle, Scots at, 1648, 294. 

Carlyle, description of the Battle of Dunbar, 
347-S; of Cromwell as Protector, 445 ; of 
Vane, 41 ■- [. 

Carneworth, Earl of, foils the King's bravery 
at Naseby, 2^0. 

Carterett, his testimony as to Vane's influence 
in [641, 14s. 

Case of the Whole Army, 277. 

Cavaliers, the name appears, 13S ; their char- 
acter, 149 ; defeated at Marston Moor, 212 
etc. ; at Naseby, 243 etc. ; under Astley, 
255 ; in arms in 1648, 2S5-6. 

Charles I, his accession, 3 ; pokes for young 
Harry with his cane, 10; his appearance and 
character, 90-1 ; quarrels with Short Parlia- 
ment, 99 ; knights Vane, 102; at Strafford's 
trial, 11S; promises to save Strafford's life, 
132 : yields to his death, 134 ; journey to 
Scotland, 1641, 137; demands the Five 
Members, 139 ; incidents at Theobald's and 
Newmarket, 146-8 ; sets up his standard at 
Nottingham, 150; at Edgehill, 153, 156; 
threatens London, withdraws to Oxford, 
157; meets Fairfax on Heyworth Moor, 15S; 
intrigues to compromise Vane, 192-3; in- 
trigues with London Catholics in 1643-4, 
194-5, with Catholics in Ireland, 204 ; his 



good generalship in 1644, 205 ; defeats Essex, 
227 ; encouraged by success of Montrose, 
235; ridicules the New Model, storms Lei- 
cester, 241 ; at Naseby, 243, 247, 250; his 
correspondence captured, 251 ; his intrigues 
after Naseby, 254 ; his letters to Vane, 1646, 
263-4 ; flees to the Scots, 265 ; seized by 
Joyce, 268 ; rejects the Heads of Proposals., 
272 ; his treachery discovered by Cromwell 
and Ireton, 273 ; flees to the Isle of Wight, 
275 ; forms a league with the Scots, 276 ; 
negotiates with Parliament, 164S, 299; his 
duplicity, impresses Vane, 300; his death, 
3M- 

Charles II, blockades the Thames, 164S, 286; 
proclaimed King at Edinburgh, 1649, 324; 
arrives in Scotland, 345 ; marches for Eng- 
land, 1651, 353; defeated at Worcester, 360; 
restored, 1660, 479 ; finds Vane too danger- 
ous to live, 524-5. 

Charles Louis, Prince Palatine, plan to raise 
him to the throne, 1644, 206. 

Chillingworth, believes in Toleration, 170. 

Christian, on non-existence of English Con- 
stitution, 435-6. 

Ciarendon, Earl of, his History of the Re- 
bellion, on the Short Parliament, 100; ac- 
tive with Falkland against ship-money, 113; 
describes the Vanes at Strafford's trial, 121- 
5; injustice of his narrative, 126; takes sides 
with the King, 138 ; characterizes Vane, 
143-4; on the siege of Gloucester, 174; on 
the Solemn League and Cozvn-ant, 178-9; 
gives Vane's speech on the Self-Denying' 
Ordinance, 232-4 ; gives Vane's speech at 
end of 164S, 30S-9 ; on Vane and Haselrig, 
1659, 460 ; describes desertion of Committee 
of Safety by Lawson, 1659, 476; his judg- 
ment of Vane, 48576. 

Claypole, Lady, Cromwell's favorite daughter, 
death of, 456. 

Cleveland, Harry Vane, Duke of, 1832, 2. 
hCoke, Sir Edward, patron of Roger Williams, 
25; on fundamental principles superior to 
Kings and Parliaments, 435, note. 

Coke, Roger, his tribute to the greatness of 
the Rump. 416. 

Colchester, siege of, 164S, 293. 

Committee of Both Kingdoms established, 199. 
See Derby House Committee. 

Committee for the new settlement of the na- 
tion, 1649, 332 ; meets often, 339 ; reports in 
favor of Ireton's plan, 1650, 341; invites 
help of Cromwell, after Worcester, 365 ; ac- 
tive in 1653, 403. 

Committee of Safety of 1642, 200: of 1659, 475. 

Commons, House of, appearance of, 97-8. 

Connecticut, Constitution of 1639, 439. 



INDEX. 



571 



Constitution, the Written, unique feature of 
American polity, 434-5; its value, praised 
by M. G. Hammond, 436 ; by Sir Henry 
Maine, 437 ; history of the idea of, 43S ; must 
originate with the People, 438-9 connec- 
tion of Cominonwealthsmen with the idea, 
440; of Vane, 441-4. 

Constitution, English, development of, 83-8 ; 
Vane recommends, 1656, plan for a written, 
441-4; his plan in 1659, 475. 

Convention Parliament, see Parliament. 

Convocation, sustains the claims of the King, 
1640, 103. 

Cotton, Rev. John, his Calvinism, 21 ; origin 
of and emigration to New England, 29 ; as 
a poet, 30 ; a friend of Cromwell, his per- 
sonal characteristics, 31; lives with Vane, 
47; liked by Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, 48; 
takes her side, 49; his views described by 
Winthrop, 54 ; whitewashes the situation in 
the Hutchinsonian Controversy, 57; states 
the differences, 70 ; the father of Indepen- 
dency, 167 ; his works and influence over 
great men, 167-9. 

Council of State, of the Commonwealth, goes 
into operation, 1649, 326 ; its constitution, 
327-8; second year of, 341; third year of, 
its standing Committees, 366; abolished by 
Cromwell, April 20, 1653, 412. 

Covenanters, at Marston Moor, 215. See 
Scots. 

Coventry, Parliamentary standard unfurled at, 

151- 

Cromwell, Henry, dislikes Vane, 428 ; retires 
to private life in 1659, 473. 

Cromwell, Oliver, described by Sir Philip War- 
wick, 114; connected with bill for abolish- 
ing Episcopacy, 141 ; begins to rise in the 
field, 159: his talk to Hampden about mak- 
ing an effective Army, 159-60 : becomes a 
leader of the Independents, 166 ; a friend of 
John Cotton, 168 ; position of, at the death 
of Pym, 191 ; favors deposition of the King, 
1644, 207 ; commands cavalry of the left 
wing at Marston Moor, 214 ; his array, 216; 
resume of his earlier career, 216; overthrows 
Rupert, 221-2; comes to the. relief of the 
right wing, 223 ; named " Ironside " by Ru- 
pert, 224; his Independency revealed, 228; 
denounces Manchester, 231 ; his connection 
with the Self-Denyivg Ordinance, 231-2, 
234 ; denounces the Lords, 236 ; excepted 
from the Self-Denying Ordinance, made 
Lieutenant-General, 239 ; joins Fairfax be- 
fore Naseby, 242 ; commands the right wing, 
245; routs Sir Marmaduke Langdale, 24S; 
strikes Cavalier Centre, 240 ; in the pursuit, 
250 ; desires to pull Presbyterians out of 



Parliament by the ears, 267 ; marches with 
the Army through London, 270; impressed 
by the King, 272 ; suppresses a mutiny, 273 ; 
at the Blue Boar Inn with Ireton, 273-4; 
the cushion-throwing with Ludlow, 284 ; his 
march to Wales, 1648, 294 ; steps taken to 
impeach him, marches to Preston, 295 ; bat- 
tle of Preston, 296; his love for Vane, 299; 
approves Pride's Purge, 310; parallel be- 
tween, and Abraham Lincoln, 314-15 ; scene 
with Lilburne, 323 ; quells insurrection, 331; 
his campaign in Ireland, 331, 337 ; campaign 
of Dunbar, 345-9 ; thinks of Vane at the 
most desperate hour, 347 ; letter to his wife, 
350; his illness, 1651, 351 ; desires union of 
England with Holland, 352 ; eluded by the 
Scots, 353 ; his march southward, 354 ; finds 
Vane " in principles too high to fathom," 
357-S; his victory at Worcester, congratu- 
lated by the Council of State, 360-1 ; his de- 
sire for a settlement of the nation, 365 ; his 
inactivity, 1652, 367 ; his toleration, 368 ; a 
source of anxiety to the Rump, 400 ; be- 
comes hostile to the Rump, 401 ; opposed to 
Vane's plan for a new Parliament, 402 ; his 
probable uneasiness at the rise of Blake, 
403 ; meets chiefs of the Rump, 405 ; at St. 
Stephen's, April 20, 1653, 406; dissolution 
of the Rump, Ludlow's account, 408-10 ; 
Algernon Sidney's account, 411 ; carries off 
the Act of Dissolution, 412 ; his high motive 
in assuming autocracy, 413; his career as 
dictator, 414; his position, 1653, 418; his 
yearning for Vane, 427 ; described as Pro- 
tector by Carlyle, 445 ; his portrait by Hou- 
braken, 446 ; addressed by Vane from Caris- 
brook, 1656, 450-1 ; his later career, 454 ; 
Milton's panegyric upon, 455 ; his last days 
and death, 456-7 ; compared with Vane, 
496-8. 
Cromwell, Richard, becomes Protector, 1658, 
457; dencunced by Vane, 466-7; abdicates, 
known as "Tumble-Down Dick," 471. 

Dakcy, Frances, mother of young Sir Henry 
Vane, 3. 

Davenport, Rev. John, writes concerning 
Vane's fanaticism, 432-3. 

Dean, General of the Fleet, 331; on the com- 
mittee for incorporating Scotland, 362 ; with 
Blake against Van Tromp, 3S7 ; his torn 
breeches, 390 ; his death, 393 ; condemns 
the Rump, 415. 

Derby House, Committee at, executive of 
Parliament, 202 ; Order- Books of, 202-3 \ 
sends Vane to York, 1644, 205 ; misses his 
presence, 207 ; directs operations of the New 
Model, 239, 241 ; Scotch members abandon 



572 



INDEX. 



it in 1648, 284 ; its power, 2S5; its boldness 

in 1648, 287, 297. 
Dering, Sir Edward, introduces the bill for the 

abolition of Episcopacy, 141. 
De Ruyter, with Van Tromp against Blake, 

38S ; his fight with the " Prosperous," 390. 
Desborough, with Cromwell against the 

Rump, 1653, 402 ; with the Wallingford- 

House Party, 1659, 469. 
De Tocqueville, on the non-existence of the 

English Constitution, 435 ; his error as to 

the Supreme Court of the United States, 

444, note ; on American hatred of England, 

D'Ewes, Sir Symonds, his Diary, on seating 
the House of Commons, 1640, 105; on the 
influence of Vane, 1642, 145 ; on the passage 
between Vane and Essex, 161-2. 

D0/1 Juan Lamberto, satire in which Vane ap- 
pears, 4S6. 

Dorislaus, ambassador to the Hague, mur- 
dered, 1641;, 336. 

Dudley, of Massachusetts Bay, his intolerance, 
20 ; a veteran soldier, 43. 

Dunbar, campaign of, 1650, 345-9. 

Echard, Royalist historian, on Vane and the 
King at Theobald's, 1642, 146-7; on the 
negotiation of the Solemn League and Cov- 
, 1 80-1. 

Edgehill, view from, 152; battle of, 153 etc. 

Edwards, describes the sectaries in the " Gan- 
graena," 257. 

Eikon Basilike, alleged spiritual autobiog- 
raphy of Charles I, 316. 

Eikonoklastes, Milton's reply to the Eikon 
Basilike, 340. 

Eliot, Sir John, dies in prison, 92. 

Endicott, goes against the Indians, 1636, 44. 

Engagement., under the Commonwealth, 337. 
.English Channel, description of, 382-3; its 
historic associations, 384; battle in, between 
Blake and Van Tromp, 389 etc. 

Epistle to the Scattered Seed of Christ, ex- 
tract from, 431. 

Epitaph for Vane, street ballad of the Resto- 
ration, 489. 

Essex, Earl of, pitiless to Strafford, 134; takes 
command of forces of the Parliament, 1642, 
150; scored by Vane for sluggishness, 161 ; 
his reply, 162 ; weary of war, 1643, 174; de- 
feated, 1644, by the King, 227. 

Fairfax, Lord, a Parliamentary commander, 
159. See Sir Thomas Fairfax. 

Fairfax, Sir Thomas, friend of Captain John 
Mason, 68 : n-fuses to read the letters of the 
King captured at Naseby, 129, 251 ; his first 



meeting with the King at Heyworth Moor, 
158; his victory at Nantwich, 204; com- 
mands the right at Marston Moor, 214; his 
prowess and ill success, 219, 223; at the 
head of the New Model, 235; demands the 
exemption of Cromwell from the Self-Deny- 
ing Ordinance, 239 ; reconnoitres before 
Naseby, 242; at the battle of Naseby, 243- 
4, 249; enters Parliament, 164.5, 256; be- 
comes Lord Fairfax, in the second civil war, 
164S, 293; ill at ease at the course of the 
Independents, in Pride's Purge and the exe- 
cution of the King, 313 ; member of Council 
of State, 32S; quells a mutiny, 1649, 331; 
withdraws from public life, 342. 

Faithorne, his portrait of Vane, 14, note. 

Falkland, active against the demand for ship- 
money, 113; sides with the King, 138. 

Feudalism, in England, influence of the Nor- 
man Conquest in developing, 85. 

Fiennes, Nathaniel, an Independent leader, 
262 ; becomes reactionary, 1648, 306. 

Fifth Monarchy, Vane attached to the idea of, 
429-431. 

Five Members, Charles I attempts to seize 
the, 1642, 139. 

Fleetwood, in Parliament, 1645, 256; with 
Cromwell against the Rump, 402; head of 
the Wallingford House Party, 1658, 457-S; 
Lieutenant-Genera], 471 ; on the Committee 
of Safety, 475 ; becomes weak-kneed, 476. 

Fortescue, cited by Vane at his trial, 517-18. 

Fox, George, the Quaker, his account of 
Cromwell's last ride, 456. 

Fox, Charles James, on the value of the Amer- 
ican Revolution to liberty, 557. 

Franklin, Benjamin, long opposed to Amer- 
ican Independence, 549. 

Frost, Gualter, secretary of the Derby House 
Committee, 202 ; of the Council of State, 
32S. 

Fronde, on the value to the individual of be- 
ing a citizen of a great country, 551-2. 

Fuller, Old, adopts Toleration, 170. 

Gallop, John, his sea-fight off Block Island, 

4'- 

Gardiner, Samuel Rawson, his judgment on 
Vane in New England, 77 ; value of his con- ■! 
sideration of Strafford's trial, 131, note; on 
the significance of the Committee of the 
Two Kingdoms, 202. 

Gardner, Lion, veteran in command at Say- 
brook, 43. 

Garrard, correspondent of Strafford, writes of 
Vane's going to New England, 12 ; writes 
of his return, 88. 

Geneva, Vane probably there in his youth, 7-8. 



INDEX. 



573 



" George," the ship, death of Blake on, 397. 
George III, England during the reign of, 558- 

60. 
Gloucester, siege of, 1643, 174. 
Glyn, lawyer prominent at Strafford"s trial, 

118; Presbyterian leader, 1645,256; at the 

trial of Vane, 50S-9. 
Gneist, Dr. Rudolph, on the ideas of Charles 

1,91; on the prematureness of the ideas of 

the Commonwealth, 415. 
Godwin, as to Vane's want of frankness, 1645, 

238-9 J as to the management in the creation 

of the nobles, 262-3. 
Goffe, Major, at the Ironside prayer-meeting, 

1648, 291 ; at Dunbar, 349. 
Goodwin, Dr. Thomas, a leader of the Inde- 
pendents, 166 ; influenced by John Cotton, 

168. 
Goring, reveals to Pym a plot, 119 ; commands 

Royalist left at Marston Moor, 218. 
Grand Remonstrance, passed, 1641, 13S. 
Grand .1 rmy Remonstrance, 164S, 302-5. 
Green, John Richard, on modern England as 

realizing the Independent programme, 90, 

546. 
Grey, of Warke, Lord, appointed Scotch com- 
missioner, 1643, and refuses, 173. 
Grenville, favors American representation in 

British Parliament, 550. 
Guilds, charters of mediaeval, their relation to 

a Written Constitution, 438. 

Hadlcw, in Kent, birthplace of Vane, 3. 

Hamilton, Earl of, opposes the Solemn 
League and Covenant, 177 ; brings about 
the Committee of the Two Kingdoms, 199 ; 
heads the Scots, 164S, 294 ; defeated at 
Preston, 296; beheaded, 1649,330. 

Hammond, Dr. W. G, on the value of a 
Written Constitution, 43'V 

Hammond, Colonel, officer of the New Model, 
245 ; King's keeper at Wight, 275. 

Hampden, John, his character, 95-6 ; his great 
influence, his reticence, 106 ; how Strafford 
wished to treat him, no; at Edgehill, 156; 
his death at Chalgrove Field, 159. 

Harcourt, French ambassador, negotiates be- 
tween parties, 1644, 204. 

Harlakenden, high-born Massachusetts colo- 
nist, 19. 

Harrison, with Cromwell at the dissolution of 
the Rump, 402, 408, 410-1 1 ; disciplined by 
Oliver, 1656, 449 ; his fanaticism, 500-1. 

" Hart," frigate, case of, 344. 

Harvard College, established, 1636, 52. 

Haselrig, Sir Arthur, school-fellow of Vane, 
5 : active in bringing bill of attainder against 
Strafford, 1641, 131 : Republican, 1649, 324; 



member of Council of State, 328 ; commands 
at Newcastle in Dunbar campaign, Crom- 
well's letter to, 347: with Vane at the dis- 
solution of the Rump, 402 ; in Richard's 
Parliament, 459; his leadership, 460; char- 
acter and influence, 467-8 ; sits in judgment 
on Vane, 477 ; his fate, 480. 

Haynes, Governor of Massachusetts Bay and 
of Connecticut, 19, 39. 

Heads 0/ Proposals, laid before the King, 
270-1. 

Healing Question, letter of Vane to Crom- 
well, occasion of, 441 ; recommends a Con- 
stitutional Convention, 442-3 ; style of, 444. 

" Hector," ship, case of, 1636, 36. 

Henderson, Rev. Alexander, Scotch commis- 
sioner, 1643, 17S; draws up the Solemn 
League and Covenant, 183. 

Henrietta Maria, becomes Queen of Charles 
1,3; favors old Sir Henry Vane, g ; plots 
against the Parliament, 112, 116; her dan- 
ger during Strafford's trial, 134 ; her in- 
trepidity and dexterity, 1643, 157. 

Holland, its disposition toward the Common- 
wealth, 351 ; embassy to, of St. John and 
Strickland, 352 ; outraged by the Act of Navi- 
gation, 370 ; obsequious to the Common- 
wealth, at war with it, 371; course of hos- 
tilities, 379 etc. ; character of the Dutch, 
3S0; defeated, 394. 

Holland, Lord, defection and repentance of, 
194. 

Holies, Denzil, Presbyterian leader, 1645 etc., 
256 ; disconcerted by the Ironsides, 266 ; ac- 
tive in 164S, 295. 

Honest Party, the, name of the Republicans, 
1649 etc., 325. 

Hooker, Rev. Thomas, founds Connecticut, 
his character and influence, 39 ; the Written 
Constitution of his colony, 1639, 439. 

Houbraken, portrait of Vane, 14, note; por- 
traits of Vane and Cromwell, 446-7. 

Hume, on Vane's artifice, :Si ; on his unin- 
telligibility, 491. 

Hutchinson, Mrs. Anne, her early history, 47; 
outbreak of the controversy with, 48; her 
friends and foes, 49 ; Weld's condemnation 
of, 50; banished from Massachusetts Bay, 
71 ; her regard for Vane, her death, 72 ; ob- 
scurity of her tenets, 74. 

Hutchinson, Colonel, in Parliament, 1645,256; 
in Council of State, 32S. 

Hyde, see Clarendon. 

Independents, rise of, under American in- 
fluences, 164 ; intolerant at first, 165, 169 ; be- 
comes tolerant in England, 170; their grow- 
ing prominence in 1644, 230 ; great influence 



574 



INDEX. 



in 1645, 255-6; they struggle with the Pres- 
byterians, 265 ; their anxieties in 164S, 297 ; 
their able management, 301 ; welcome Grand 
A rmy Remonstrance, 305 ; at Pride's Purge, 
310. 

Instrument of Government, Cromwell's, 440, 
note. 

Interdependence, better than Independence, 
564. 

Ireland, Cromwell's campaign in, 1649, sub- 
dued, 337. 

Ircton, Henry, officer of the New Model, 240 ; 
Commissary General, 1645, 2 4 2 > commands 
the left wing at Naseby, 244 ; routed by Ru- 
pert, 247 ; charges Royalist centre, 249 ; in 
Parliament as a Recruiter, 256; draws up 
the Heads 0/ Proposals, 271 ; at the Blue 
Boar I an with Cromwell, 1647, 273-4; sec- 
onds the motion to lay the King by, 2S3 ; at 
the siege of Colchester, 293; author of the 
Grand Army Remonstrance, 303; engi- 
neers Pride's Purge, 310; author of Army 
manifestos, 312 ; of 2d Agreement of the 
People, 320; left out of the Council of State, 
328 ; subdues Ireland, 362 ; his death, his 
home, 363 ; Ludlow's eulogy, 364 ; \d& Agree- 
ment 0/ the People, a draft for an American 
Constitution, 440. 

Ironsides, name given to Cromwell by Rupert, 
224 ; his troops so called, 242, 245, note ; at 
Naseby, 245, 248, 250 ; American ideas of 
the, 2f>o; Sexby, Allen, and Sheppard be- 
fore Parliament, 266-7 ; march through Lon- 
don, 270; meeting against Cromwell, 273; 
issue Agreement of the People and Case 
of the Whole Army, 277 etc. : their Amer- 
ican utterances, 280-1 ; Allen's account of 
the prayer-meeting of, 1648, 287-92; at 
Preston, 296; their Grand Army Remon- 
strance, 302 etc.; at Pride's Purge, 310; 
their manifestos, 312; in the campaign of 
Dunbar, 345-9; of Worcester, 354, 360 : they 
make the Rump uneasy, 400 ; back Crom- 
well in dissolving the Rump, 409. 

James I, knights old Sir Henry Vane, 3. 
John, King of France, captured at Poictiers 

by a Vane, 1. 
Johnson, Lady Arbella, in New England, 19. 
Johnston of Wariston, Scotch commissioner, 

1643, 187. 
Joyce, Cornet, carries off the King from 

Holmby House, 268. 

Keeling, King's counsel at Vane's trial, 527. 
King, see Charles I, and Charles II. 
King's Bench, Court of, Vane arraigned be- 
fore, 508. 



Lambert, General, at Marston Moor, 214, 
220 ; in the campaign of 1648, 293 ; retards the 
Scotch advance, 295 ; at Preston, 296 ; at 
Dunbar, 34S; on committee for the incorpo- 
ration of Scotland, 362 ; with Cromwell 
against the Rump, 402 ; in Wallingford- 
House Party, 1659, his character and career, 
459 ; turns out restored Rump, 474 ; becomes 
a flower-painter and cultivator, 4S0. 

Langdale, Sir Marmaduke, commands King's 
left at Naseby, 245; routed by Cromwell, 
248; in arms in 1648, 286; bravery at Pres- 
ton, 296. 

Laud, Archbishop, tries to convert young 
Harry Vane, 10 ; his character, 93 ; his 
arrest, 114; blesses Strafford on the way to 
execution, 135 ; his impeachment, 142. 

Lawson, Admiral, with Blake against Van 
Tromp, 387 ; disciplined by Cromwell, 1656, 
449 ; deserts Committee of Safety, 1659, 476. 

Lawson, Sir Wilfrid, demands abolition of the 
House of Lords, 18 

Leicester, stormed by the King, 1645, 241. 

Lenthall, Speaker, at dissolution of the Rump, 
411; at restoration of the Rump, 470. 

Leslie, David, at Marston Moor, 215-16, 222; 
destroys Montrose at Philiphaugh, 254; ap- 
pointed to command Scots in 1650, 345 ; his 
skilful management, 346; routed at Dunbar, 
348. 

Levellers, 2S2; under the Commonwealth, 331. 

Leven, Earl of, Alexander Leslie, commands 
Scots, 1644, 1S7; inefficient at York and 
Marston Moor, 212, 214, 220. 

Ley, Lord, visitor to Massachusetts Bay, 60; 
returns to England with Vane, 1637, 7°- 

Lilburne, John, passionate fanatic, 257-8; op- 
posi s the Common wealthsmen and is im- 
prisoned, 322-3, 331. 

London, sides with Parliament, 149; send- its 
train-bands to Gloucester, 1643, 174; Catho- 
lic plot to separate city from Parliament, 
194-5; discovery of, and rejoicings, 195-6; 
Vane's speech to people of, in Guildhall, 
196-7; festivities of, 19S; Ironsides march 
through, 270; rejoices over the Restoration, 
479- 

Long Parliament, see Parliament. 

Lords, House of, its zeal against the a 
sions of the King, 99 ; seeks to shield Lord 
Holland, 194; out-manoeuvred by Vane, in- 
formation of the Derby House Committee, 
200-1; opposes the Self -Denying Ordi- 
nance, 1645, 234; swept away, 1649, 321. 

Love, Rev. Christopher, case of, 158. 

Lovelace, Lord, King's agent in his intrigue 
with Vane, 1644, 193. 

Lowell, J. R., on a Written Constitution as 



INDEX. 



575 



restraining popular whim, 436; the perma- 
nence of America dependent on faithfulness 
to English traditions, 561. 

Lucas, Sir Charles, a Royalist commander at 
Marston Moor, 21S-20. 

Ludlow, General, tribute to Vane, 100; in 
Parliament, 1645, 256; member of the Coun- 
cil of State, 328 ; tribute to Ireton, 364 ; de- 
scribes dissolution of the Rump, 40S-10; 
disciplined by Oliver, 1636, 449 ; asserts 
persecution of Vane by Cromwell, 453. 

Mackintosh, Sir James, high estimate of 
Vane, 492. 

Magna Charta, relation of, to a Written Con- 
stitution, 4 (8. 

Maidstone, his testimony concerning Vane, 
482. 

Maine, Sir Henry, on the American Constitu- 
tion, 437; on the vagueness of the term Re- 
publican, 516-17. 

Manchester, Earl of, heads the eastern coun- 
ties, 159; commands Parliamentary left at 
Marston Moor, 214; inefficient at second 
battle of Newbury, 231. 

Marshall, Rev. Stephen, commissioner to Scot- 
land, 1643, 173 ; preaches at Edinburgh, 178 ; 
sermon after Violett's plot, 19S. 

Marston Moor, localities visited, 213; battle 
of, 214 etc. 

Marten, Henry, his character, 1S9; his wit, 
190; on John Lilburne, 257: Republican in 
1648, 302; his wit, 1649, 325; member of 
the Council of State, 327; designs the Great 
Seal of the Commonwealth, 369; with Vane 
at the dissolution of the Rump, 402; in 
the restored Rump, 1659, his fate, 4S0 ; as a 
free-thinker, 501. 

Marvel], Andrew, his tribute to Charles I, 314. 

Mason, Capt. John, veteran soldier, 44 ; con- 
quers the Pequots, 68 etc. 

Massachusetts Bay, in 1635, 16; its charter, 
18; colonists, 19; character and influence 
of ministers of, 21 ; arrival in, of Vane, 32; 
Vane chosen Governor of, 33. 

Masson, his Life of Milton describes Prynne, 
257; the Order Books of the Council of 
State, 339; estimates Vane. 498. 

Mather, Cotton, on Roger Williams, 25. 

Matthew, Sir Tobie, describes young Harry, 8. 

May, Sir T. Erskine, on England as the par- 
ent of democratic republics, 555. 

Maynard, at Strafford's trial, 118; Presby- 
terian leader, 1645, 256; at Vane's trial, 
508-9. 

Meditations concerning .Win's Life, theolog- 
ical work of Vane, extract from, 502-3. 
Mercuriits Aulicus, Royalist news-sheet, on 



the proposition to send Vane into the field, 
1643, 163 ; on Vane"s trip to York, 1644, 209. 

Mercuriits Britannicus, Parliamentary news- 
sheet, on Vane's trip to York, 1644, 210. 

Miantonimo, chief of the Narragansetts, 44 ; 
he visits Vane in Boston, 46. 

Militia, dispute as to the command of, 146, 
1 48. 

Milton, John, an Independent, 166; Secretary 
for Foreign Tongues to the Council of State, 
329; writes Eikonoclastes and Defeusio 
Populi A ngt 'icani, 340; his sonnet to Vane, 
376-8 ; a calumniator of the Rump, 415 ; his 
panegyric on Cromwell, 454-5. 

Ministers, of New England, their weight in 
the community, 21 ; their Calvinism, as 
poets, 22. 

Monk, General, at Dunbar, 34S ; subdues 
Scotland, 165 1, 361 ; on committee for in- 
corporating Scotland, 362 ; with Blake 
against Van Tromp, 3S7 ; commands the 
fleet in 1653, 393; condemns the Rump, 
1653, 415; sides with the restored Rump, 
1659, 474 ; his march to London, restoration 
of Charles II, conduct and character, 477- 
478. 

Montague, on the left wing at Marston Moor, 
216; officer in the New Model, 240, 244; 
Cromwellian, 1659. 473. 

Montrose, the Earl of, his successes, 227 ; the 
King takes courage from them, 1645, 235; 
his victory at Kilsyth, 241 ; routed at Philip- 
haugh, 254. 

Nalson, on Vane at Strafford's trial, 127; on 

his speech against Episcopal Government, 

142. 
Narragansetts, held firm to the English by 

Roger Williams, 1636, 44. 
Naseby, present appearance of localities, 242- 

3 ; battle of, 243 etc. 
Navigation Act, as a cause of the Dutch war, 

1652, 370. 
Navy, re-created by Vane, 1649, 331; refer- 
ences to, in Order Books, 343 ; against the 

Rump, 1653, 415. 
Neville, a leader of the restored Rump, 1659, 

474 ; his free-thinking, defended by Vane, 

501-2. 
Newburn, Vane's alleged cowardice at, 103. 
Newbury, London train-bands at first battle 

of, 191 ; second battle of, 230. 
Newcastle, Earl of, Royalist commander at 

York, 1644,205 ; disagrees with Rupert, 217; 

at Marston Moor, 220. 
New England, Vane resolves to go to, ic; 

source of Independency in Old England, 166. 
New Model, the army of the, origin of , 235 ; 



576 



INDEX. 



its constitution, 239-40 ; general distrust of, 
before Naseby, 24 1. 

New Zealand, present position and institutions 
of, 553-4- 

Norman Conquest, its influence on the Eng- 
lish Constitution, 85. 

Nuremberg, Vane's visit to, 6, 7. 

Nye, Rev. Philip, a leader of the Indepen- 
dents, 166; influenced by John Cotton, 168; 
a commissioner to Scotland, 1643, 173; his 
sermon at Edinburgh, 17S ; at St. Margaret's, 
iSS. 

Okey, Major in the New Model, 240 ; on the 
left wing at Naseby, 244, 247, 249; disci- 
plined by Cromwell, 1656, 449. 

Order Books, of the Derby House Committee, 
202-3 ; of the Council of State, 333 ; variety 
of their contents, 339; their record, 1651, 
354-7 ; at outbreak of the Dutch war, 371-4. 

Ormond, Marquis of, organizes Ireland against 
the Commonwealth, 1649, 323. 

Osbaldestone, Lambert, teacher of young 
Harry at Westminster, 5. 

Otis, James, advocates an American represen- 
tation in British Parliament, 548-9. 

Owen, Dr. John, a leader of the Independents, 
1643 ; influenced by John Cotton, 16S. 

Oxford, Vane at the University of, 5. 

Palfrey, J. G. , his History of New Eng- 
land on Roger Williams, 26. 

Palmer, Sir Geoffrey, attorney-general at 
Vane's trial, 511. 

Parliament, origin of, 86. Short Parliament, 
1640, convenes, 9S; dissolves, 100. Long 
Parliament, convenes, 1640, prominent mem- 
bers and their seats, 105 ; its appearance, 
106 ; driven by terror to pursue Strafford, 
117; not to be dissolved without its own con- 
sent, 133; opposes the King, 137-8; makes 
war, 1642, 150; appeals to Scots for aid, 
1643, 175; signs the Solemn League and 
Covenant, 187-8; denied legal status by the 
I King, 204 ; purged by Pride, and becomes 
the Rump, 310; reconstituted, 1660, 47S. 
Rump Parliament, its ideas, 31S; its diffi- 
culties, 322-4; unpopularity of, 1653, 399; 
hostility to, of Cromwell, 402; plans to re- 
place the, 402-5 ; appearance of, April 20, 
1653, dissolution of, according to Ludlow, 
40S-10 ; according to Algernon Sidney, 411 ; 
tributes to, 4:6-17; Scott's defence of, 417; 
revived in 1659, 470; driven out by Lam- 
bert, 474; abandoned by Vane, sits in judg- 
ment on Vane, 477. Oliver's Parliaments, 
414. Richard's Parliament, convenes, 1659, 
45S ; Vane's election to, 459 ; his great in- 



fluence, 460 ; his speeches in, 461-7 ; dis- 
solved, 469. Convention Parliament, 1660, 
restores Charles II, 479. 

Patrick, Captain, veteran soldier, 43, 

Pemberton Square, home of Vane in New 
England, 47; as birthplace of the English 
Commonwealth, 167, 169. 

Penn, Admiral, with Blake against Van 
Tromp, 3S7 ; captures fifty ships, 392. 

People's Case Stated, extract from, 504-6. 

Pequots, war with, how caused, 43 ; cruelty of, 
56 ; vanquished by Mason, 6S-70. 

Peters, Rev. Hugh, comes to New England 
with Vane, 32 ; they show arrogance, 33 ; 
chides Vane, 53-4 ; a leader of the Inde- 
pendents, 166; suffers death at the Restora- 
tion, 4S0. 

Petition and Advice, scheme of government 
in 1659, 461 ; denounced by Vane, 463. 

Petition of Rigid, adopted by Charles I, 
162S, 92. 

Phillips, Wendell, his tribute to Vane, 75-6. 

Pickering, on the left wing at Marston Moor, 
216. 

Poictiers, battle of, a young Sir Henry Vane 
at, 1. 

Popham, a General of the Fleet, 1649, 331 ; 
writes to Vane from before Lisbon, 344; 
his death, 35S. 

Presbyterians, numerous in London, 1640, 115 ; 
begin to yield before Independents, 164; 
their activity, 1645-6 ; out-manceuvred by 
Independents, 263; their power in 1647, dis- 
concerted by the Ironsides, 266; King sides 
with them, 1647, 277; anxious for peace, 
1648,300; their poor management, 301 ; re- 
sist the Army, 305 ; purged out by Pride, 
164S, 310. 

Preston, battle of, 296. 
(Pride, Colonel Thomas, officer in the New 
Model, 240; succors the Parliament centre 
at Naseby, 249; his Purge, 310; at Dunbar, 
349; his " peck " against lawyers, 368. 

Protectoratists, party in 1659, they retire from 
the field, 473. 

Providence Colony, addressed by Vane, 1654, 
424-5; it replies, 425-6. 
(Prynne, William, Presbyterian leader, 256-7; 
his heroic conduct, 1648, 305-6; scene be- 
tween him and Vane, 1650, 470. 

Psalm of Mercy, ballad on Vane, 488. 

Pym, John, his influence on Vane as a youth, 
12 ; his character, 94-5; harangues the Short 
Parliament, 98 ; leader of the Long Parlia- 
ment, his temper, 106; his judgment of 
Strafford, no; denounces Strafford, in; 
manages the prosecution, 118 etc. ; brings 
forward the evidence of Vane, 121 ; looks 



INDEX. 



577 



toward help from Scotland, 1643, 172; his 
illness, 1S9 ; death and funeral of, 192. 

Queen, see Henrietta Maria. 

Raby Castle, bought by old Sir Henry 
Vane, 1626, the King entertained there, 4; 
appears in the title of Strafford, and also of 
young Sir Henry Vane, 102 ; account of 
visit to, 419-421 ; Vane retires to, 421. 

Reade, a Catholic intriguer, 1643, 195. 

Reasons for an Arrest of Judgment, Vane's 
extract from, 52S-9. 

Recruiters, new members of Parliament in 
1645, 256. 

Republican, vagueness of the name, 516-17. 

Retired Man's Meditations, theological work 
of Vane, extract from. 429 ; judged by Bayne, 
499. 

Reyley, a plotter in 1643, 195. 

Robinson, Rev. John, pastor of the Pilgrims, 
a founder of Toleration, 170. 

Robinson, Sir John, Lieutenant of the Tower 
at Vane's execution, 539, 541-2. 

Root and Branch party, oppose Prelacy, 115. 

Roundheads, first appearance of the name, 
13S: their character, 149-150. 
( Rupert, Prince, and the Rev. Nathaniel Ward, 
23 ; his portrait at Warwick Castle, 154; his 
character, 155; at Edgehill, 156; success in 
Lancashire, 1644, 205; skill before York, 
212 ; at Marston Moor, 218, 221-2 ; names 
Cromwell Ironside, 224; commands the 
King's right at Naseby, 245 ; his brilliancy 
and imprudence, 246-250 ; becomes a sailor, 
331 ; defeated by Blake, 36S. 

Sailors, description of, in the seventeenth 
century, 3S0-2. 

" Saint Patrick," ship, case of, 35. 

Santa Cruz, battle of, 396. 

Sassacus, chief of the Pequots, 44. 

Say and Sele, Lord, interested in Connecticut, 
40; in the Separatists, 116; at the forma- 
tion of the Committee of Two Kingdoms, 
200; becomes reactionary in 1648, 307. 

Scilly Isles, Vane imprisoned in, 480 ; letter 
from, to his wife, 507-8. 

Scots, adopt the Covenant, 94; at Newburn 
skirmish, 103; visited by the King, 137; 
Parliament invokes help of, 1643, 172 etc. ; 
march for England, 187 ; at Marston Moor, 
215, 220-1 ; dispirited, 1644, 227; receive 
the King, depart for home, 1646, 266; en- 
gage with the King, 1647, 276 ; take arms 
against Parliament, 285 ; enter England, 
294; routed at Preston, 296; preparations for 
campaign against, 1650, 343 ; their counter- 



preparations, 345 ; routed at Dunbar, 348-9; 
retire northward, 351 ; the rush for England, 
353 ; battle of Worcester, 360 ; disposal of, 
as prisoners, to be incorporated with the 
English, 362. 

Scott, Thomas, schoolfellow of Vane at West- '. 
minster, 5 ; a Recruiter, 1645, 256 ; Inde- 
pendent leader, 164S, 302 ; defends the exe- 
cution of the King, 315-16; member of 
Council of State, 329 ; upholder of the 
Rump, 1653, 402 ; his defence of the Rump, 
417; in Richard's Parliament, 1659, 459; his 
fine character, 46S; sits in judgment on 
Vane, 1659, 477 ; winds up gloriously the 
English Commonwealth, 478-9. 

Selden, John, characterized, 1S9; mocks at 
fanaticism, 501. 

Self-Denying Ordinance, how brought about, 
231-2. 

Separatists, fathers of Independency, 116, 169. 

Ship-money, dispute about, 96. 

Short Parliament, see Parliament. 

Sidney, Algernon, Colonel in the New Model, 
240 ; in Parliament, 1645, 256 ; disapproves 
Pride's Purge and King's execution, 313 ; at 
dissolution of the Rump, his account of, 
410-11 ; his tribute to, 416. 

Sikes, biographer of Vane, on Vane's absorp- 
tion in work, 140; on his embarrassments, 
14S ; on his influence in the Dutch war, 
375-6- 

Simon de Montfort, saves English freedom in 
the 13th century, S7. 

Simple Cobbler of Aggawam, of Nathaniel 
Ward, 23-4; against Toleration, 165. 

Skippon, commands the London train-bands, 
Major-General of the New Model, 239; at 
Naseby, 244, 249; a Recruiter in 1645, 256; 
pays the Scots, 1646, 265 ; introduces the 
complaint of the soldiers, 266; member of 
the Council of State, 32S. 

Smith, Adam, favors American representation 
in British Parliament, 550. 

Social Compact on board the " Mayflower,"' 
its relation to a Written Constitution, 439. 

Solemn League and Covenant, negotiated, 
175-1S0; adopted, 180; signed, 1643, 188. 

"Sovereign of the Seas,'' crack ship of Eng- 
lish Navy, 385. 

Spain, disciplined by Blake, treasure-ships of, 
395; fight against, off Cadiz, at Santa Cruz, 
396. 

Standish, Miles, veteran of Plymouth, 43. 

Stapleton, Presbyterian leader in 1645, 256. 

Start, promontory of the, Blake's death off 
the, 397. 

St. John, seconds Vane in forming the Com- 
mittee of Both Kingdoms, 199; his In- 



573 



INDEX. 



dependency, 228; on Derby House Com- 
mittee, 294; disapproves of Pride's Purge, 
313 ; member of Council of State, 32S ; chiuf 
justice of the Common Pleas, his embassy to 
Holland, 352 ; on committee for incorporat- 
ing Scotland, 362 ; author of Navigation Act, 
370; with Cromwell against the Rump, 402. 

St. Margaret's, Westminster, at the signing of 
the Solemn League and Covenant \ 1S7. 

St. Stephen's Chapel, Westminster, meeting- 
place of Parliament, its appearance in 1640, 
97 ; April 20, 1653, 407. 

Stone, chaplain in the Pequot war, 69. 

Strafford, the Earl of, his first knowledge of 
Vane, 12; his character, 93; his weight in 
the Privy Council, 99 ; his affront to the 
Vanes, 102 ; supremacy of his influence, 104 ; 
his career, portrait, early zeal for freedom, 
10S ; upholds the royal prerogative, 109-10 ; 
denounced by Pym, in; arrested and sent 
to the Tower, 1 12-13; bis trial, 117 etc. ; diffi- 
culty as to the charge of treason, 118 ; the 
work of the Vanes, 120 etc. ; his probable 
honesty, 130; his defence, 132; his con- 
demnation, 133 ; given up by the King, 134 : 
execution, 135; his significance in history, 
136; compared with Vane, 530. 

Strickland, ambassador with St. John to Hol- 
land, 352. 

Stubbe, Henry, testifies to Vane's desire for 
retirement, 426 ; described by Anthony a 
Wood, his Defence of the Good Old Cause, 
490; his eulogy of Vane, 491. 

Supreme Court, its place as regards a Written 
Constitution, 444, note. 

Tate, Zouch, moves the Self Denying Ordi- 
nance, 232. 

Taylor, Jeremy, upholder of Toleration, 170 

Thorough, policy of Laud and Strafford so 
called, 10 ; fear of, in New England, 56. 

Thurloe, testimony of his State Papers to 
friendship of Vane and Cromwell after the 
dissolution of the Rump, 427; disapproves 
of the Healing Question, 448 ; leads the 
Cromwellians, 1659, 459. 

Toleration, Vane's early advocacy of, 64-6 ; 
upheld by Roger Williams, 66; a modern 
idea, history of its rise, 169-70; promoted 
by Roger Williams and Vane, 171-2 : upheld 
by Vane and Cromwell, 1651, 368-9; ex- 
tended by Vane to .free-thinkers, 501-2. 

Tower-Hill, description of, 533-4. 

"Triumph," flagship of Blake, against Van 
Tromp, 3S5 ; her fight with the " Brederode," 
3S9 ; her pursuit of the Dutch, 391-2. 

Undbrhill, Capt. John, veteran soldier in 



New England, 44 ; in the Pequot war, 1636, 

6S-9; his libertinism, 72-3. 
Upham, C. W., on Vane as a connecting link 

between England and America, 568. 
Urry, Sir John, on Royalist left at Marston 

Moor, 218-20. 
Uxbridge, unsuccessful negotiations at, 1645, 

235- 

I 'alley of Jelioshaphat, religious work of Vane, 
extract from, 430. 

Vane, Charles, ambassador to Portugal, 338 ; 
favors Voluntaryism, 369. 

Vane, Christopher, son and heir of young oir 
Henry, 422, 531, note. 

Vane, George, defends Raby Castle against 
the King, 420. 

Vane, Sir Henry of Poictiers, 1356, 1 ; of 
Wyatt's rebellion, 1554, 2. 

Vane, Sir Henry (called "old Sir Henry"), 
his marriage, travels, accomplishments, and 
early success, 3 ; buys Raby Castle, becomes 
principal Secretary of State, 4 ; his pliability, 
9; gives evidence against Strafford, 1641, 
120; his conduct here considered, 126; sides 
with the Parliament against the King, loses 
good opinion of both sides, 145 ; member of 
Committee of Both Kingdoms, 202; nomi- 
nated Baron, 1645, 262 ; target of Marten's 
wit, 325; his later career, death, and char- 
acter, 423. 

Vane, Sir Henry, of Raby Castle, Knight 
(called " young Sir Henry "), Irs ancestors, 
1, 2; birth, 1612, 3; at Westminster school, 
4; his vigorous youth, at Oxford, at Vienna, 
5 ; his letters from Germany, 6, 7 ; perhaps 
at Geneva, Sir Tobie Matthew's description, 
8; turns Puritan, 9; uninfluenced by the 
King or Laud, 10; determines for New Eng- 
land, 11; his letter to his father, 12, 13; h.s 
appearance, 14; his portraits, 14, note: 
arrives in Boston, his presumption, 32; 
elected Governor, 1636, draws up "funda- 
mentals,'' 33 ; assumes state, 34 ; deals with 
the ships, 35-S ; interest in the settlement of 
Connecticut, 40 ; journey through the Colony, 
receives the Narragansett embassy, 46 : his 
house in Boston, 47 ; sides with Mrs. Anne 
Hutchinson, 49 ; his views described by 
Winthrop, 51 ; presides at establishment of 
Harvard College, sore troubled by dissen- 
sions, 52 ; chided by Hugh Peters, 53-4; his 
struggle for reelection as Governor, his fail- 
ure, 58; made deputy from Boston to Gen- 
eral Court, 59; his chagrin, 60; his contro- 
versy with Winthrop, 61 ; loyal to the King, 
62; his toleration, 64-6; departs from New 
England, 70 ; regard of Mrs. Hutchinson 



INDEX. 



579 



for, 72 ; clashing of authorities as to Vane in 
New England, 75 ; his immaturity in Massa- 
chusetts Bay, 77 ; his promise as a state- 
builder, 78; his magnanimous letter to Win- 
throp, 79, So ; his marriage, 8S ; close friend- 
ship with Pym and Hampden, 88-9 ; elected 
to the Short Parliament, made joint Treas- 
urer of the Navy, 97 ; Ludlow's tribute to, 
100 ; knighted, charged with cowardice, 102 ; 
elected to the Long Parliament, his seat at 
St. Stephen's, 105 ; active in the Root and 
Branch party, 116; gives evidence against 
Strafford, 121-5; his conduct here con- 
sidered, 126, 130; makes impression upon 
Parliament, 140 ; in connection with the 
abolition of Episcopacy, his indirection, 
141 ; carries up the impeachment of Laud, 
speech against Episcopal government, 142 ; 
portrayed by Clarendon, 143-4; Carterett's 
testimony as to his influence, D'Ewes on his 
coolness and sense of justice, 145 ; his part 
in the debates on the militia, 146 ; hostile to 
an accommodation, 1642, 147 ; sole Treasurer 
of the Navy under the Parliament, his self- 
sacrifice, 148 ; stimulates London and Parlia- 
ment to persevere in the war, 157-8; on 
Committee for Waller's plot, 158; scores 
Essex for sluggishness, 161 ; Essex chal- 
lenges him to the field, 162; Parliament 
thinks of sending him into the field, 163 ; a 
product of American influences, 163-4; a 
leader in Independency, 166-8; trained in 
I John Cotton's study, 169 ; entertains Roger 
Williams, 1643, 170; speech of, quoted by 
Roger Williams, his growth in toleration, 

172 ; sent to Scotland to procure an alliance, 

173 ; reaches Edinburgh, hardship of his 
position, 175 ; received by Scotch Assembly, 
176; Solemn League and Covenant nego- 
tiated, 1643, 177-8; Cavalier and Presby- 
terian accusations of duplicity against, 179- 
181 : the case summed up, 182-4; his dying 
declaration, 185 ; signs the Solemn League 
and Covenant, 187-8; leader of the Com- 
mons from the death of Pym, 191 ; at Pym's 
funeral, 192; the King intrigues to com- 
promise him, 1643-4, 193-4; foils Violett's 
plot, 195-6 ; speech upon it to the London- 
ers, 196-7 ; brings about the Committee of 
the Two Kingdoms, 199-202 ; his prominence 
in the Committee, 203 ; sent to the army in 
the North, 205 ; his secret mission, 206 ; his 
return and report, 207-8 ; news-sheet com- 
ments upon it, 209-10; his share in the vic- 
tory of Marston Moor, 1644, 2 10 ; worn out 
with labor, 227 ; his Independency troubles 
the Covenanters, 228-9; with Cromwell 
engineers the Self-Denying Ordinance, 231 ; 



his speech on it in the Commons, 232-4 ; his 
influence in London, 234 ; his friendship 
with the Marquis of Argyle, 235 ; speech to 
the Londoners in behalf of the New Model, 
236-7 ; his subtlety, 238 ; his leadership at 
end of 1645, approached by the King for re- 
lief in his distresses, 263-4; l a y s before the 
Commons the Heads 0/ Proposals, 1647, 270; 
disgusted with Kingship, 272 ; takes Re- 
publican ground, 284; his power at Derby 
House, 1648, 2S6 ; his activity, 297 ; broken 
down by illness, 298 ; mutual love between 
him and Cromwell, a commissioner to treat 
with the King at Wight, 299 ; impressed by 
the King's ability, 300 ; outwits Charles,, 301 ; 
opposes a treaty with him, 307-9 ; disap- 
proves Pride's Purge and execution of the 
King, 312; withdraws from Parliament, 313; 
besought to return, 317; his eminence in the 
Commonwealth, 324; member of the Council 
of Slate, 326 ; his hesitation before Repub- 
licanism, 327 ; probably invites Milton to be 
Secretary for Foreign Tongues, 329 ; on 
committee for the Navy, 331 ; for Alliances, 
for the new settlement of the nation, 332 ; in 
the Order Books of the Council of State, 
333! organizes a great Navy, 337; second 
only to Cromwell, 340; recommends a Parlia- 
ment on Ireton's plan, 1651, 341 ; his sense 
of the difficulties of the Commonwealth, 
342 ; on Committees for meeting the Lord 
General, and for Army and Navy, 343; 
Cromwell's appeal to, on the eve of Dunbar, 
347 ; and after Dunbar, 350 ; entertains with 
Cromwell the idea of uniting England with 
Holland, 352 ; his leadership in finance, in 
war-matters, 355-6; in care for Ireland and 
Scotland, " in principles too high for Crom- 
well to fathom," 357-8; his sternness to 
Rev. Christopher Love, 358-9; instructs 
commissioners sent to the Lord General 
after Worcester, 360-1 ; on Committee to in- 
corporate Scotland with England, 362 ; his 
work in the Committee for the new settle- 
ment, 364-5 ; reelected to Council of State, 
366 ; protects Catholics and Unitarians, \ 
369; administrator in the Dutch war, 371 : 
testimony of the Order Books to his activity, 
370-4; Sikes's account of his work in 1652, 
375-6; sonnet of Milton to, 376-8 ; probably 
pleased with measures to balance the great 
influence of the Army, 400; Irs plan for re- 
placing the Rump, 402-3 ; his conservatism, 
404 ; desires dissolution of the Rump, 405 ; 
his speech, April 20, 1653, 407; Cromwell's 
prayer to the Lord to be delivered from, 409 ; 
called by Cromwell a juggler, -411 ; the two 
men not gravely estranged, 412 ; hopeless- 



5 So 



INDEX. 



ness of their effort, 415 ; position of, in 1653, 
418 ; retires to Raby Castle, 421 ; his wife, 
children, and brothers, 422 ; ceases to be 
" young " through death of his father, 1654, 
423; his letter to unruly spirits at Provi- 
dence, 425-6 ; lays down public life gladly, 
426; his return besought by Cromwell, 427 ; 
his unpopularity with Cromwellians, 428 ; 
his religious vagaries, the Retired Mail's 
Meditations, 429-30 ; his belief in the im- 
mediate second coming of Christ, and the 
Fifth Monarchy, 430-1 ; his following at 
Raby, popular stories about his fanaticism, 
432-3 ; his exposition of the idea of a Written 
Constitution, 433; his idea in the Healing 
Question, 441-4; Vane and Cromwell alien- 
ated, 445-6 ; his appearance, 1656 ; portrait 
by Houbraken, 445-7 ; the Healing Ques- 
tion condemned by Cromwellians, 448 ; im- 
prisoned in Carisbrook Castle, 449 ; his let- 
ter thence to Cromwell, 450-1 ; writes to 
Harrington, 453 ; returns to public life, 1659, 
459; leader in Richard's Parliament, 460; 
speech against Richard's Protectorate, 461- 
3; on limiting his power, 463; on military 
affairs and the Upper House, 464 ; on the 
Scotch and Irish members, 465; denuncia- 

l tion of Richard, 466-7 ; helps restore the 
Rump, scene with Prynne, 470; takes com- 
mand of a regiment, leading member of the 
Council, 471 ; sides with the Army against 
the Rump, 474 ; one of the Committee of 
Safety, his plan for a new Constitution, 475 ; 
pleads with Lawson not to desert the Com- 
mittee of Safety, the final word of his public 
life, 476; ordered by the Rump to Raby 
Castle, 477 ; imprisoned at the Restoration, 
480 ; writes The PeopWs Case Stated, variety 

/ of estimates of his character, 4S1 ; estimates 
of Maidstone, Baxter, 482-3 ; Anthony a 
Wood, Biographia Britatmica, 484 ; Burnet, 
Clarendon, 485; portrayal of, in Don Juan 
Lamberto, 4S6 ; in street ballads, 487-9; 
estimates of Henry Stubbe, Hume, Forster, 
Upham, 491 ; Wendell Phillips, Sir James 
Mackintosh, 492 ; Carlyle, 492-3 ; summary 
view of Vane as a practical statesman and 
a political theorizer, 495 ; his position rela- 
tive to contemporary statesmen, 496; com- 
pared with Cromwell, 496-8; his limitations, 
498-9; parallels to his eccentricity, 500-1; 
his tolerance to free-thinkers, 502; extract 
from his Meditations concerning Life and 
People's Case Stated, 502-6 ; his letter to 
his wife from prison, 507-8; arraigned as a 
traitor, 508 ; his impression of the signifi- 
cance of hi* trial, 509 ; the indictment, 510 ; 
he pleads not guilty, 511 ; the counts of the 



indictment, 512 ; his defence, 513 etc. ; Salus 
populi suprema lex, 514; his opposition to 
Cromwell, 515 ; in what sense he was a Re- 
publican, 515-17; his tone as regards the 
Stuarts, 516-23 ; he insists on the subordinacy 
of the King, 523; Charles II finds him too 
dangerous to live, 525 ; his answer to the 
charge of keeping out the King, 526 ; the 
sentence, 527; extract from his Reasons /jr 
an Arrest of Judgment, 52S-9 ; comparison 
of, with Strafford, 530 ; his address to his 
children the day before his execution, 531- 
2 ; his prayer on his last morning, 532-3 ; his 
progress to the scaffold, 534-7 ; his address 
to the people, 538-43 ; the execution, tribute 
of a disciple, 545 ; his significance as a con- 
necting link between the severed branches 
of the English-speaking race, 566-8. 

Vane, Henry, son of former, dies in youth, 
betrothed to daughter of Lambert, 460, 486. 

Vane, Henry, Duke of Cleveland, favors re- 
form in 1832, 2. 

Vane, Lady, wife of young Sir Henry, 422; 
letter to, from Vane in prison, 507-8. 

Vanity of Vanities, ballad on Vane, 487. 

Van Tromp, Admiral of the Du'.ch, his battle 
with Blake off Dover, 371 ; the broom at his 
mast-head, 386 ; engages Blake, Feb. 18, 
Ib 53, 389; a s a mother-bird to the convoy, 
391 ; the Flying Dutchman, 392 ; blows up 
his ship, his death, 394. 

Vaudois peasants, avenged by Blake, 394. 

Verney, Sir E. , killed at Edgehill, 154. 

Vienna, Vane's visit to, 5. 

Violett's plot, discovered by Vane, 1643, 195. 

Voluntaryism, Vane"s adhesion to, commemo- 
rated in Milton's sonnet, 376-8. 

Wales, rises for the King, 1648, 286. 
Waller, Edmund, his plot against Parliament, 

,58. 
Waller, Sir William, successes and defeats of, 

159; routs Hopton, 1644,204; defeated by 

the King, 205. 
Wallingford House party, 457, 45S ; depose 

Richard in concert with the Republicans, 

469. 
Ward, Rev. Nathaniel, his Simple Cobbler of 

Aggawam, 23 ; his intolerance, 165. 
Warwick, Sir Philip, his account of Cromwell, 

114; on Vane, 1S1. 
Weld, Rev. Thomas, on the Antinomians in 

New England, 50. 
Wentworth, Sir Thomas. See Strafford. 
Westminster, ancient palace of, described, 

97- 
Westminster Assembly of Divines, 173. 
Westminster Hall, described, 117. 



INDEX. 



58l 



Wetherell, Sir Charles, Tory leader, 1832, on 
the Reform bill as a revival of 17th-century 
Republicanism, 89. 

Whalley, Ironside Colonel at Naseby, 245 ; 
guards the King at Hampton Court, 269; at 
Dunbar, 349 ; one of Cromwell's Major-Gen- 
erals, 449. 

Wheelwright, a Hutchinsonian, 48; a pioneer 
of New Hampshire, 71. 

Whistler, Surgeon Dan, writes of Blake 
wounded, 373-4. 

White Coats, in the Royalist centre at Mars- 
ton Moor, 217, 220, 223, 225. 

Whitlocke, Bulstrode, his Memorials on Vane 
at Strafford's trial, 127 ; a Parliament leader, 
191 ; his services, 1649, 325 ; member of the 
Council of State, 328 ; on the death of Lord 
Capel, 330 ; with Vane at the dissolution of 
the Rump, 402. 

Williams, Roger, his early career, 25 ; arrives 
in Boston, at Salem, 26 ; at Plymouth, the 
Magistrates try to send him home, 27 ; founds 
Providence, hates Quakers, 28 ; his magna- 
nimity, 29 ; holds the Narragansetts firm to 
the English, 45 ; early adopts Toleration, 
66; his tribute to Vane, 67 ; visits London, 
1643, 170; publishes the Bloudy Tenent, its 
character, 171 ; illustrates the necessary limi- 
j tations of freedom by the parable of a ship's 
company, 25S-9 ; defends Voluntaryism in 
England, 1652, 369; a iriend of Lady Vane, 
422; correspondence between Vane and his 
Colony, 1654, 424-6; testifies to Vane's be- 
ing missed, 427. 

Wilson, Rev. John, his high birth and connec- 
tions, 21 ; his character and accomplish- 



ments, 23 ; an anti-Hutchinsonian, 1636, 49 ; 
his sad speech on the condition of the 
churches, 54 ; whitewashes the situation, 57 ; 
his speech from the tree on Newton Com- 
mon, 58 ; his great influence in the Hutchin- 
sonian Controversy, 71. 

Winthrop, John, his position and character in 
Massachusetts Bay, 20 ; blamed for too great 
lenity, 33; disapproves Vane's policy in the 
affair of the ships, 38 ; describes in his Joiir- 
nal Gallop's sea-fight, 41-2 ; Miantonimo's 
visit to Boston, 46; Mrs. Hutchinson, 48; 
his fair-mindedness, describes Vane's posi- 
tion and his own, 51 ; Vane's trouble of 
mind, 52 ; the chiding of Hugh Peters, 54 ; 
elected Governor over Vane, 58; in contro- 
versy with Vane, 61 etc. ; defines a com- 
monweal, 62; describes Underhill, 72-3; 
difference of view as to his influence, 75 ; his 
magnanimity to Vane, 79. 

Winthrop, John, Jr., settles Agawam, 1635, 
16; interested with Vane in settling Con- 
necticut, 32, 40. 

Worcester, battle of, 360. 

Worsley, Lieut. Col., commands the mus- 
keteers at the dissolution of the Rump, 409 ; 
his skeleton unearthed, 1868, 411, note. 

Wray, Frances, becomes the wife of Vane, 88. 
See Lady Vane. 

Wroth, Sir Thomas, moves to " lay the King 
by," 1648, 283. 

Wyatt's rebellion, 1554, ancestor of Vane con- 
cerned in, 2. 

York, Vane describes the siege of, 1644, 2 °8 ; 
present appearance of the city, 212-13. 



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Studies in History. Crown 8vo, $1.50. 

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